Bendkoopsoyuz Wine Cellar

The story of the Bendkoopsoyuz Wine Cellar begins with an unexpected discovery: in the autumn of 2021, during routine sidewalk renovation work at the intersection of Lenin and Suvorov streets, workers uncovered a crack that led to a series of rooms finished with hewn sandstone. The decision to open these remarkable underground spaces to the public was an inspired one, and the result is one of the most distinctive and atmospheric destinations in all of Bendery.

According to local legend, Turkish defensive lines once ran through these very passages, connected by underground tunnels. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, residents adapted these passages as personal cellars while constructing new city blocks above. Old-timers still recall the pre-revolutionary shopping arcades that lined Lenin Street, demolished in the 1960s, where shopkeepers and later the Bendery city traders stored their goods — and where visitors could occasionally treat themselves to a glass of Moldovan wine in the passage cellars below.

The wine cellar’s name and signage pay direct tribute to this vivid commercial past, echoing announcements from the Bendery Cooperative Union found in city newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s. Ten historic photographs line the stairway, depicting urban trading scenes from the first half of the 20th century. Within the cellar’s halls, visitors can taste a selection of Moldovan wines alongside displays of wine-production equipment, traditional household utensils and domestic objects of the past — items gathered during expeditions to villages throughout the republic, with some donated by local citizens. The large hall’s distinctive barrels were contributed by the Tiraspol winery KVINT.

One final detail completes this unique experience: the silhouette of Ostap Bender — the beloved literary character from Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov’s novels “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf” — greets visitors at the entrance to the basement. According to an enduring local hypothesis, it was the name of the city of Bendery itself that inspired the authors to give their protagonist his legendary surname.

Location: Liberation Square, Bendery