Orsova Romania
Romania
Frequently Asked Questions
At the quay of the new town, around the wide bay where the Cerna river meets the Danube, at the entrance to the Iron Gates. The lakeside promenade is easily walked from the landing, with no climb.
Because the old city was submerged in the late 1960s, when the Iron Gates dam raised the Danube by about 35 metres. Its residents rebuilt their streets higher up, in an amphitheatre around the water.
The narrowest section of the Iron Gates, upstream of Orșova, where the Danube slips between limestone walls dropping sheer into the water. The Great Cazane run about four kilometres, the Small Cazane three.
By boat excursions that leave regularly from the quay. Many river ships also sail through the gorges themselves: the passage then ranks among the highlights of the whole itinerary. Book ahead through the ship or the operators at the quay.
A stone face some forty metres tall, carved between 1994 and 2004 into a cliff near the gorges. This portrait of Decebalus, the last king of the Dacians, is the tallest rock sculpture in Europe.
A Roman plaque carved nearly two thousand years ago, on the Serbian bank almost opposite Decebalus, marking the passage of Trajan's legions on their way to conquer Dacia. Two monuments nineteen centuries apart face each other above the same water.
Rising water covered it in 1970. It was a Turkish island with its bazaar, its mosque and lanes where Turkish delight and tobacco were sold, a few kilometres downstream of Orșova. Its residents scattered, and local guides still speak of it with visible emotion, photographs in hand.
A small monastery set right at the water's edge in a sheltered cove of the gorges, visible from the boat. It punctuates the passage between the cliffs and the caves that pierce the rock.
A windbreaker, even in summer: wind funnels through the defile and the deck of a small boat is exposed. Binoculars also help to pick out the caves and the details of the walls.
No, nothing monumental, and it's worth knowing. What Orșova offers is a particular light on a great river, a walk along the bay, and stories: a relocated town, a drowned island and a king with a face of stone.
