Orșova

Orșova is a port city on the Danube in the Mehedinți County of southwestern Romania, in the Banat region just above the Iron Gates gorge where the Cerna River meets the Danube. The site held the Roman port and fort of Dierna in Dacia and later became a major medieval border fortress, passing between the Kingdom of Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg monarchy before joining Romania after the First World War. When the Iron Gates dam was built, the old town and the nearby island of Ada Kaleh were flooded, and a new Orșova was built on higher ground between 1966 and 1971. Local industry includes shipbuilding, hydroelectric power and mineral processing, and visitors come for the Danube gorge, the rock sculpture of Decebalus and the Mraconia Monastery.