The
Iron Gates is a
gorge on the
River Danube. It forms part of the boundary between
Serbia and
Romania.
In the broad sense it encompasses a route of 134 km (83 mi); 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,
Iron Gate I Hydroelectric Power Station and
Iron Gate II Hydroelectric Power Station.
The gorge lies between Romania in the north and Serbia in the south. At this point, the river separates the southern
Carpathian Mountains from the northwestern foothills of the
Balkan Mountains. The Romanian side of the gorge constitutes the
Iron Gates natural park, whereas the Serbian part constitutes the
Đerdap national park.
In English, the gorge is known as Iron Gates or Iron Gate. An 1853 article about the Danube in
The Times of London referred to it as "the Iron Gate, or the Gate of Trajan."
In languages of the region including Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak,
Turkish, German and Bulgarian, names literally meaning "Iron Gates" are
used to name the entire range of gorges.
These names are
Romanian:
Porţile de Fier An alternative Romanian name for the last part of the route is
Defileul Dunării, literally "Danube Gorge".In Serbian, the gorge is known as
Đerdap, with the last part named
Đerdapska klisura from the
Byzantine Greek Κλεισούρα , "enclosure" or "pass."
The first narrowing of the
Danube lies beyond the Romanian isle of
Moldova Veche and is known as the
Golubac gorge. It is 14.5 km long and 230 m (755 ft) wide at the narrowest point. At its head, there is a
medieval fort at
Golubac, on the Serbian bank. Through the valley of
Ljupovska lies the second gorge,
Gospodjin Vir, which is 15 km long and narrows to 220 m (722 ft).
The cliffs scale to 500 m and are the most difficult to reach here from land. The broader
Donji Milanovac forms the connection with the
Great and the
Small Kazan gorge, which have a combined length of 19 km (12 mi). The
Orșova valley is the last broad section before the river reaches the plains of
Wallachia at the last gorge, the
Sip gorge.
The Great Kazan (
kazan meaning "vat" or "reservoir") is the most
famous and the most narrow gorge of the whole route: the river here
narrows to 150 m and reaches a depth of up to 53 m (174 ft). East of
this site the
Roman emperor
Trajan had built
the legendary bridge erected by
Apollodorus of Damascus. Construction of the bridge ran from 103 through 105, preceding Trajan's final conquest of
Dacia. On the right (Serbian) bank a Roman
plaque commemorates him. On the Romanian bank, at the
Small Kazan, the likeness of Trajan's Dacian opponent
Decebalus was carved in rock from 1994 through 2004.
Significantly older discoveries have been found in the geographically less spectacular gorge of
Gospodjin Vir: in the 1960s the
archaeological survey Lepenski Vir was unearthed, the most important in all of
southeastern Europe. The
sandstone statues dated to the early
neolithic era are particularly splendid. Together with many other findings in the
Iron Gates gorges area, they indicate that the region has been inhabited for a very long time.
