Moldova learning maps — sources and scope, checked 18 October 2026

Regions: 37 second-level reference areas: 32 districts, the separate municipalities of Chișinău, Bălți and Bender, autonomous Gagauzia, and the left-bank territorial units. Their statuses differ; the left-bank units are not a second Gagauzia-style autonomous territory.
Source: UNHCR, OCHA FISS, via geoBoundaries gbOpen MDA ADM1, boundary year 2020.
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO (CC BY 3.0 IGO).
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/
https://data.humdata.org/dataset/moldova-administrative-level-0-1-boundaries
https://www.geoboundaries.org/api/current/gbOpen/MDA/ADM1/
Pinned source: https://github.com/wmgeolab/geoBoundaries/tree/9469f09/releaseData/gbOpen/MDA/ADM1
Metadata: /data/moldova-boundaries-source-metadata.json
Names normalised to Romanian diacritics; geometry repaired where necessary using Shapely make_valid. No administrative areas merged or removed. Gagauzia retains its separate parts.

These boundaries depict administrative reference areas inside internationally recognised Moldova. They do not show effective control. Bender is on the west bank but under the Transnistrian de facto authorities. The Dubăsari city and constitutional district administration are distinct. Administrative lines around the Dniester must not be interpreted as a ceasefire or control line.
https://moldova.osce.org/node/105897

Rivers: Natural Earth 1:10m rivers and lake centre lines, public domain.
Pinned revision: ca96624a56bd078437bca8184e78163e5039ad19
https://github.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-vector/tree/ca96624a56bd078437bca8184e78163e5039ad19/geojson
https://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/
Prut, Dniester/Nistru and Danube retain their cross-border source extent, including the lower Dniester continuation. This is a selected three-river exercise, not a complete drainage network. Generalised channels do not show riverbank ownership, present water levels, exact port frontage or navigation conditions.

Twenty city coordinates: curated from Wikipedia primary coordinates, checked against the retained administrative polygons. Town pins identify settlements rather than district seats in every case: the city of Dubăsari is in the left-bank reference area, while the constitutional district administration is based at Cocieri.

Rebuild: python3 scripts/build-moldova-maps.py (Shapely 2).
Exact retained geometry: scripts/moldova-map-source.geojson.
Authored prompts, notes and city coordinates: scripts/moldova-map-places.json.

Visiting: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/moldova
Checked 18 October 2026: UK advice is against all travel to Transnistria. These learning maps and heritage pins do not establish safe access.