Where is the Iron Gates Gorge?
by Noah Patton
You may have heard of the Iron Gates Gorge and assumed it was somewhere inaccessible due to it’s formidable name. It is in fact a hazardous section of the Danube river linking the lower and upper Danube. The riverbed rocks and the associated rapids made the gorge valley an infamous passage for ships with local navigators required on days of old. Here is a little on this fascinating stretch of water.
Where is it? The Iron Gates is a gorge on the River Danube forming the boundary between Serbia to the south, and Romania to the north. In the broad sense it encompasses a route of 134 km (83 miles); in the narrow sense it only encompasses the last barrier on this route, just beyond the Romanian city of Orșova, that contains two hydroelectric dams, with two power stations. It was first referred to in English as the Iron Gate or the Gate of Trajan by The Times of London in 1853. [1]
History: Excavations at archaeological sites in the area have uncovered statues and artifacts that date back to the Neolithic and Mesolithic eras. The area is so important that an entire ancient culture is named after the gorge: the “Iron Gates Mesolithic Culture”.
The Iron Gates is home to the archaeological site Lepenski Vir, which contains evidence of a permanent human settlement dated between 9500-6000BC. The architect Hristivoje Pavlović described this area as “the first city in Europe”. [2]
The next people to inhabit the region were the Romans under the rule of Trajan. A famous Roman architect, Apollodorus of Damascus, constructed Trajan’s Bridge across the Iron Gates. For over a thousand years this bridge remained the longest arch bridge (1135m) that had been built, despite it only functioning for a few decades. The next Roman emperor, Hadrian, dismantled the bridge to better defend the empire from northern barbarians. Now very little remains of the monument but a few ruined stone pillars. In the area where this bridge once stood, a monument was built in 1994 to honour Decebalus, the last king of Dacia. He fought against Trajan to preserve his country, which is the equivalent of modern Romania.
This region includes the small island of Ada Kaleh, which existed in the Iron Gates Gorge in times past. Ada Kaleh was originally a fort, built by Austrians in 1669, to defend the region from the Turks. Over the next century it would be taken by the Turkish, only to be retaken by the Austrians, it was again retaken by the Turkish and finally retaken by the Austrians. Eventually the island was given to the Turkish in 1789 a peace treaty between the countries, and it lost its military significance.
When the Ottoman Empire was forced to retreat from the territory in 1878 due to the Congress of Berlin, (a meeting and agreement between some of the most significant powers in Europe at the time) the agreement failed to mention Ada Kaleh. Because of this, anyone that lived on the island was exempt from tax, customs and conscription. After this a mosque was built and it became known as a smuggler’s nest. Later constructions of dams in the region would cause the water level to rise by over 30m and the island of Ada Kaleh has been lost to the Iron Gates ever since.
Now: The Iron Gates is one of Romania’s most popular natural tourist attractions and is often referred to as one of the “Seven Wonders of Romania”. In Drobeta-Turnu Severin, Romania, there is a museum dedicated to the history of the region, known as the Iron Gates Museum. Here there is extensive information on folk art, archaeological finds and local fauna. Along the Danube there are numerous old relics from previous Serbian and Romanian empires.
[1] “The Seat of War on the Danube,” The Times, December 29, page 8
[2] Hristivoje Pavlović (20 August 2017), “Tajne Lepenskog Vira I – Prvi grad u Evropi”, Politika (in Serbian), p. 20