The Iron Gates is the name given to a gorge located in the Danube. This gorge is located in Romania, in the border with Serbia, and besides the Iron Gates is also known as the Gvozdena Vrata, the Demirkapi, the Portile de Fier, and the Eisernes Tor. Tourists who wish to meet beautiful landscapes and attractive natural spots during a vacation in Romania should make sure of visiting this outstanding attraction.
When visiting the Iron Gates, the first Gorge tourists could find is the Golubac Gorge, located next to Moldova Veche. This gorge has a width of approximately 230 meters and a length of 14.5 kilometers, and is very attractive not only due to the beautiful natural scenery it offers but also to the fact that there is a very interesting medieval fort located at its end.
By going through Ljupovska, tourists could reach the second gorge of the Iron Gates: Gospodin Vir. Gospodin Vir, with a width of around 225 meters and a length of 15 kilometers, counts with impressing cliffs of more than 500 meters, being this often remembered by visitors as one of the most striking spots of the Iron Gates.
The most renowned gorge of the Iron Gates is the Great Kazan. The Great Kazan, with a width of 150 meters, is the narrowest gorge visitors could find in this destination as well as one of the most interesting from the point of view of history. On this gorge, one of the most famous Roman emperors ruling in Wallachia, Trajan, with the architect Apollodorus Damascus, built a famous bridge of which still nowadays tourists could meet some remains of its pillars.
The Channel of the Iron Gates, known as the Sip Channel, was officially inaugurated in the year 1896 by the Seribian King Alexander Obrenovich, the Romanian King Carol I, and the Austro- Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph. According to historians, the creation of this channel was initiative of the Hungarian Istvan Szechenyi and involved explosions of great magnitude necessary to turn a two kilometers stretch into an 80 meters passage.