Lepenski Vir sits on a bend of the Danube in the Iron Gates gorge, and it holds the remains of one of the oldest settlements in Europe. People lived on this terrace by the river from roughly the tenth to the sixth millennium before our era, fishing, hunting and gathering, and later farming. They built trapezoid houses with plastered floors, arranged around a central hearth, and carved remarkable sculptures from river boulders: faces with round eyes and open mouths that look something like fish, set beside the hearths. Nothing in the nearby landscape prepares you for how old and strange they are.
The site has a story of its own. When the huge Iron Gates dam was built in the 1960s and 1970s, the rising water would have drowned the terrace, so the whole settlement was carefully moved upslope and rebuilt, with a museum placed over the remains. The original spot lies under the river. There is something poetic about a place that survived ten thousand years by the water and was then saved from it by engineers.
The setting is fine. The Danube here is squeezed into a gorge between the Carpathians and the Balkan mountains, a steep forested canyon that is among the deepest in Europe, with cliffs rising from the water and the opposite Romanian bank close enough to see farmhouses. The road along the Serbian bank runs through the Đerdap National Park, a gentle but constantly changing ribbon of tarmac that rises, falls and bends with the shoreline, with tunnels and rock cuttings and views of the broad, green-brown river. Surfaces are generally good, though occasional rockfall and patched asphalt appear, and trucks and tour buses are common in summer.
Spring and autumn are the best times, with mist rising from the river in the morning and the forests in colour. Midsummer can be hot, but the river keeps things cooler. In the gorge, sections of the road were rerouted when the reservoir was created, so older maps can be misleading.
Check opening times before you come, as the museum hours can vary seasonally. Facilities are modest, a small café and toilets, so do not expect much more. Donji Milanovac, about fourteen kilometres downstream, is the nearest community with shops and fuel, and it is wise to fill up there before heading into the gorge.
Come with time to look, not just to photograph.