Visiting the city Drobeta Turnu Severin

drobeta turnu severin

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. The climate of Drobeta Turnu Severin City is temperate-continental, with the most powerful influences coming from the Mediterranean Sea. Here the weather is calm, without any powerful winds and for the most of the time is warm and mild. Summers are hot and long and winters are mostly mild with constant temperatures. The annual average of the temperature is 11-12° C and the rainfall is 600 mm per year.

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.

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 (Heroes Monument), 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.

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Meeting with Marius Screciu, the Mayor of Drobeta Turnu - Severin

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The Medieval Fortress

The remains of this fortress, 500 m west of the ancient Roman Danube Bridge, were rediscovered in the 19th century. The first archaeological excavations suggested that here was the place of an ancient Dacian fortress, depicted on Trajan`s column in Rome. In the 20th century, it became clear that in 1247 AD the Hungarian kingdom ordered the catholic knights of St John to take over the mighty St Severin (St Severus) fortress on this strategically crucial point near the Iron Gates of the Danube.

The fortress soon became the most important stronghold along the Lower Danube. While there might have been some construction even in the 10th century AD, the archaeologists finally discovered three phases of construction. Firstly it was built at the end of the 13th century by Romanian forces. The second construction started after the occupation of Severin by Hungarians, in 1419, while the third started during the reign of the knights (mid 15th century) who left in the late 15th century. The fortress stood until 1524, when Severin fortress was destroyed by Ottomans under Suleiman the Magnificent.

Only one tower of the fortress remained, which brought to birth the new city name Turnu-Severin, ‘tower of Severin’ (Severus), in 1833. This tower might have been standing for another 20 years, though not longer than 1550.