Mehedinți: The Iron Gates and the Danube Gorges
Travel guide · editorialA trip to Mehedinți takes you to one of the most impressive stretches of river in Europe: here the Danube squeezes through the Iron Gates, the narrow passage between the Carpathians and the Balkan Mountains. Limestone cliffs, Roman ruins, and a giant rock sculpture of a face make this county in southwestern Romania a rewarding destination.
Through the Danube Gorges
Mehedinți borders Serbia along the Danube. Near Dubova, the river narrows to just a few hundred meters in the Greater and Lesser Cauldrons (Cazanele Dunării), where the cliffs rise almost vertically from the water. It was right here that the roughly 130-foot-tall rock relief of the Dacian king Decebalus was carved into the stone in the 1990s and 2000s, and right next to it, the small Mraconia Monastery stands on the bank. Boat trips from Dubova and Orșova show off the gorge best. Beyond Orșova, the Iron Gates I hydroelectric power station, built jointly with Yugoslavia in the 1960s, dams the Danube into a long lake. Inland lies the Mehedinți Plateau, with karst landscapes such as the Ponoarele Natural Bridge.
Turnu Severin and the Romans
The county seat, Drobeta-Turnu Severin, stands on the site of the Roman city of Drobeta. Around A.D. 105, Emperor Trajan had Apollodorus of Damascus build a massive stone bridge across the Danube here; the remains of its piers can still be seen on the riverbank. The Iron Gates Region Museum tells this story and displays a model of the bridge as well as an aquarium with Danube fish. Nearby lie the ruins of the medieval Severin Fortress and the Roman fort. The town, with its broad boulevards and its water tower, was laid out according to a plan in the 19th century.
Food, Getting Around, and the Best Time to Visit
Danube fish, for example as plachie baked in the oven, and wines from nearby Oltenia belong on your table, as do sheep's cheese and polenta in the villages. The best time to visit is from May to October, when excursion boats run and the DN57 riverside road west through the Banat Mountains is especially beautiful. Turnu Severin is on the Bucharest–Timișoara rail line, and a road leads to Serbia across the Iron Gates dam.