Serbia Danube Iron Gates Route (406 km)
Belgrade to Kladovo · one way, about 406 km back to the start
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Why this ride
406 km from Belgrade to Drobeta-Turnu Severin, about 5 h 29 of riding. It goes by way of Golubac, Lepenski Vir and Donji Milanovac. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Roadbook
- Belgrade
start
Belgrade is a city built on a fault line between worlds, and it announces the fact where the Sava river meets the Danube beneath the old fortress of Kalemegdan. This is where the ride begins, in a capital of well over a million people, noisy, restless, a bit scruffy and constantly alive. It has been fought over by Romans, Byzantines, Hungarians, Ottomans and Austrians, and the fortress walls carry the scars of all of them. Climb up in the early morning, before the day starts, and you can look across the confluence to the flat green plains of Vojvodina.
Getting out is the only part that needs patience. Belgrade traffic is dense, drivers are assertive, tram tracks and cobbles lie in wait, and the ring roads can be slow at rush hour. Once past Zemun, an old Habsburg town on the Danube that still has its own Austro-Hungarian feel, things loosen up and the river road begins. Fuel is on every other corner, so top up before you leave the city and carry some cash for tolls and small shops along the way.
The Danube route east is a real journey. You pass the huge fortress of Smederevo, built in the 1400s by the Serbian despot Đurađ Branković as the last redoubt before the Ottomans overran the country. Then the landscape tightens as the river is squeezed through the Iron Gates, a gorge on the border with Romania, with cliffs on both banks and fortresses like Golubac standing on the shore. Farther on, a carved Roman inscription commemorates the legions who first built a road along this wall of rock.
Before you ride out, eat. The Belgrade bakery breakfast of burek, a flaky cheese or meat pie, with yoghurt, is a local ritual, and later in the day a kafana, the traditional tavern, will serve grilled meat with kajmak, a salty cream spread, and a rakija, the local fruit brandy, that you should treat with respect before getting back on the bike. The spring and autumn light on the water is the best of the year, and the summers are hot and humid, so the early start makes sense.
- Golubac
scenic
Golubac fortress looks like something drawn by a child who loved castles: nine towers of different heights, tumbling down a rock to the water's edge, with a harbour wall and a great arched gate in front. It stands where the Danube, having crossed the wide Pannonian plain, narrows suddenly into the gorges of the Iron Gates, and for centuries whoever held it controlled river traffic. Hungarians, Serbs and Ottomans fought over it repeatedly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and it changed hands more than once. After a long restoration it reopened to visitors in the 2010s, and you can now walk the ramparts and climb the towers.
The village itself is tiny, perhaps sixteen hundred people, and the nearest large town is across the river in Romania. On the Serbian side, Veliko Gradište is the sensible place for fuel and supplies, so fill the tank there before you start along the river road. A local legend explains the swarms of tiny black flies that sometimes plague this stretch in early summer: the Golubac fly is said to have been born from the blood of a dragon killed by Saint George in a nearby cave. Whatever the origin, the flies are real, so carry a visor wipe in late spring.
The ride along the Danube from here is one of the best in the Balkans. The road hugs the river, tunnelling through limestone in places, with the Romanian bank rising steeply on the other side and the water sliding past wide and green. Curves are gentle and fast, the surface is generally good, and the traffic is light outside the summer weekends. The Djerdap National Park protects the gorge, with its griffon vultures, lynx, and oak and beech forests, and the air feels cleaner here than in the plain.
Weather matters. In winter the river fog is thick and the road can be icy, and in summer the afternoon sun beats on the cliffs. Autumn is probably the best season, with golden light and few other visitors. The view of the fortress from the road, as you come round the bend with the river below, is worth stopping for, so pull over safely. Cafes near the entrance serve strong coffee, grilled fish from the Danube, and rakija, the plum brandy that Serbs drink with ceremony.
- Lepenski Vir
scenic
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.
- Donji Milanovac
scenic
Donji Milanovac is a young town in an ancient place. The old village of the same name, along with several others, was drowned in 1972 when the Iron Gates dam raised the Danube by many metres, and a new town was built on the high ground a few years earlier to take the displaced people. It is a tidy, planned place of about two and a half thousand, laid out around a wide bay, with a promenade, a small port and a clutch of cafes where fishermen and tourists sit side by side. Majdanpek, the nearest larger town, is up in the hills, and across the river lie the Romanian villages of the Banat.
The area is a treasure house for anyone interested in the deep past. A short way upstream lies Lepenski Vir, a prehistoric settlement dating back some eight thousand years, where the people who lived here carved heavy boulders into the likeness of fish-headed figures, among the oldest monumental sculpture in Europe. A museum now protects the site, and it was moved to higher ground to save it from the flood. Downriver, cut into the cliff above the water, runs a Roman road, and there you can still see a stone tablet, the Tabula Traiana, which commemorates the emperor Trajan's engineering of the passage around the year 100.
On the Romanian bank, a few kilometres downstream, an enormous face has been carved into the rock, depicting Decebalus, the last king of the Dacians, who resisted Trajan. It was finished in the early 2000s and can be seen clearly from the Serbian road or from a boat. The Danube at the Iron Gates is a place where ancient emperors and modern engineers have both left their marks.
The road from here to Golubac, and eastward toward Kladovo, is some of the finest riding in the region. It is mostly smooth, with wide curves and tunnels, and it runs close to the river for long stretches. In midsummer it is hot and quiet. In spring and autumn the hills are green or gold. Fuel is available in town, but do not rely on stations in the villages. Grilled river fish, fresh bread and local wine are the order of the day, and the sunset over the gorge is a fine way to end it.
- Kladovo
finish
The Danube here is squeezed through a gorge between the Carpathians and the Balkans, and the result is one of the great river landscapes of Europe. The Iron Gates, called Porțile de Fier in Romanian and Đerdap in Serbian, run for about a hundred kilometres, with cliffs rising steeply on both sides and the water flowing wide and slow.
The history is old and dramatic. In AD 105 the Roman emperor Trajan ordered a bridge to be built across the Danube here, designed by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus, a wooden-decked structure on stone piers that was the longest bridge in the world for a thousand years. Its stone piers can still be seen at low water, and the ruins of the Roman fort at Drobeta are in the town. Nearby, on the Serbian side, a rock plaque, the Tabula Traiana, commemorates the building of the road along the gorge. On the Romanian side, a gigantic face of the Dacian king Decebalus, about forty metres high, is carved into the rock, finished in 2004, a modern monument to an ancient enemy.
In 1972, a huge hydroelectric dam, built jointly by Romania and Yugoslavia, closed the gorge and raised the water, drowning rapids, villages and the island of Ada Kaleh, a small Turkish community. The dam carries a road across the river, with a border crossing, so you can cross between the two countries on the wall itself, and passport checks are required.
Riding along the Danube on either side is a pleasure. The Romanian road, the DN57, hugs the cliffs with bends, tunnels and views of the water, and the surface is generally good, though rockfall and slow trucks are common. On the Serbian side, the road is also winding, with similar views. In summer, the heat is strong, and fog can lie over the river in the mornings. Expect border queues at the dam in high season.
Fuel is easy in Drobeta-Turnu Severin, with several stations and plenty of places to eat, and it is a good place to fill up before the gorge, since villages along the road are small. Try the fresh Danube fish, grilled or in a soup.
Go in the morning, when mist lies on the water and the cliffs emerge slowly into the light.