MEHEDINTI-Drobeta Turnu Severin

Cities of Mehedinti

DROBETA TURNU SEVERIN

The Most Beautiful Romanian City on the Danube

Located on the highest terrace of the Danube, Drobeta Turnu Severin, the capital of Mehedinti county, is the most beautiful city on the Danube in Romania.
Drobeta was discovered by the Roman legions while looking for new territories to conquer, in an attempt to "globalize" the world of those times. The Dacians were conquered after three wars, the last two won with big efforts by Emperor Trajan, in 101-106. Romanization followed - a process of civilizing the natives according to Western standards. The name of Severin was perhaps given to the place in the memory of Septimius Sever, the Roman Emperor who ranked Drobeta as colonia. The Latin seed brought to these fertile soils developed into the Daco-Roman ethnogenesis, which lasted along the centuries. The marks of the Dacian-Roman wars are still present in the modern city of Drobeta Turnu Severin today: the ruins of the Trajan's bridge built by Apollodorus of Damascus, the craftsman of Trajan's Column in Rome (Italy) and those of the Roman Camp of Drobeta, the first stone fortress built in Dacia in order to defend the northern end of the bridge. The ruins of both, the Trajan's bridge and the Roman Camp of Drobeta are preserved outside The Iron Gates Museum in Drobeta Turnu-Severin.
After many more centuries, the area around the old fort has become an important region, during the formation process of the Hungarian kingdom and the Wallachian small countries which would fight continuously mainly against the Otoman Empire. During the modern times, this city facing the Danube, bearing a historical fate, was to become a royal way, a "via regia" for the second time. Here had Emperor Trajan entered, thus extending Europe beyond the Danube, here came king Carol I to lead Romania towards Europe (8th of May 1866). In the period between the first and the second World Wars, the city of Drobeta Turnu-Severin, a cultural metropolis, succeeded in ranking among the first 15 great urban centers in Romania.

More than 20 monuments decorate the face of the city. Among these: the monument dedicated to the heroes of the 1916-1918 war (in the Park of Roses); the monument of the Emperor Trajan and the one of the Dacian King, Decebalus (in the Central Park); the monument dedicated to the allies of the World War II, work in inox by the artist C. Lucaci, the author of the astonishing kinetic fountain in front of the Palace of Culture, in the city downtown. Drobeta Turnu-Severin has beautiful parks and gardens. The Park of Roses spreads out on a 12 hectares area in the south of the city; the "General Dragalina" gardens which hosts the ruins of the medieval castle of Severin; the park outside the The Iron Gates Museum, where the archeological site of the fort Drobeta can be visited - all these parks stretch along the Danube terrace, with elegant alleys and canopies of chestnuts bending over the Carol I Boulevard. The Central Park has an English style design with spring fountain, monuments and lightshows. In the North of the city, there is the Crihala Natural Park on a 13 hectares area and in the western part of the city, a park with water basins, woods and alleys.