Tighina is small enough to be seen in a day, and the headline draw is the Ottoman-era fortress on the bank of the Dniester. Beyond the citadel the city is a mix of crumbling Soviet apartment blocks, late-imperial Russian streets near the centre, and the slightly surreal civic life of a place whose street signs are in Russian, whose currency is the Transnistrian rouble, and whose officials answer to Tiraspol rather than Chisinau. Combine the fortress with the Transfiguration Cathedral, the riverbank promenade, and the strange military-railway museum hidden in a siding outside town.