Cimișlia (Romanian pronunciation: [tʃimiʃˈli.a]) is a town located in the southern part of Moldova situated on the banks of the Cogâlnic River, between the capital of Chișinău and the autonomous territorial unit of Gagauzia.

The first written mention of Cimişlia dates from 4 July 1620, when the savant Vladimir Nicu explained that a local legend had given the town its name from an unknown origin word meaning "wealth".

The priest Iacob Iusipescu, who made the first attempt at a written history of Cimişlia in 1874, explained that in fact it was a word of unknown origin, but cimiş was the name given to construction workers and bricklayers at that time, used by Romanian and Tatar alike.

The Cimişlia railroad station, which takes advantage of the broad network of links toward the warehouses of the industrial and commercial companies of the city, is located in the village Mihailovka at a distance of 12 km.

Fossil deposits on a territory of 2.56 km2 (0.99 sq mi) in bluffs in the southeast of the city were discovered by I. Suhov in 1932 to contain bones, the remains of Hipparion fauna of the Turolian type, which were studied and described in numerous monographs published in Bucharest (I. Simionescu et al.) and Moscow (L. Gabunia).