The Iron Gates
Golubac, Lepenski Vir and the Kazan gorge — in that order, downstream
- When to go
- October 14° · 5 rainy days
- Per day
- €€price 2 of 5
- How many days
- 1–2days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Right now
The Đerdap gorge is where the Danube stops being a lowland river and becomes the narrowest, deepest stretch along its entire course — and tucked into the same gorge is a settlement eight thousand years old, older than the Egyptian pyramids.
Golubac fortress is the first stop, a two-hour drive from Belgrade along the Danube shore, right where the gorge begins. Tickets are sold by zone: the basic one, €8.09, covers three towers and the palace, while the Hat Tower is only on the priciest, €21.30, and adults only. With children, you stay in the basic zone.
Lepenski Vir is about forty kilometres downstream. The settlement is roughly eight thousand years old, one of the oldest in Europe, and what you visit today isn't where it was found: when the Iron Gates dam raised the Danube in 1971, the site was moved some thirty metres uphill, the house floors lifted in pieces and reassembled. Since 2011 a museum roof has covered them, so you walk through the settlement as if through a hall.
Guides for The Iron Gates
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
The Iron Gates in 2 days
→The first day drives down the Danube from Golubac to Lepenski Vir and a night in Donji Milanovac, the second keeps the…
What to see in The Iron Gates
Golubac fortress
Ten towers on a cliff above the Danube. Each pricier zone adds one part of the fortress to the green one, with a cap on how many people can be inside at once: blue adds towers 3 and 4 (twenty), red tower 7 (five), black the Hat Tower (two).
€8.09–21.30 (by zone) · closed Monday · booking: no (groups: notice)
Lepenski Vir
The dig produced 52 sandstone sculptures, many with a fish-like face — heavy brow, long nose and a wide mouth.
A gorge cruise
A trimaran from Donji Milanovac runs for 90 minutes through the Great and Small Kazan, the narrowest and deepest stretch of the Danube, beneath cliffs several hundred metres high; the fare is €17.04.
€17.04 · 90 min · booking: timed slot
Trajan's Plaque
A Roman inscription carved into the rock above the Danube, honouring Emperor Trajan and the road his army cut through the gorge nearly two thousand years ago. Best seen from the water.
free
Donji Milanovac
A small riverside town seventeen kilometres downstream from Lepenski Vir and the departure point for boats to the Kazan — the handiest base for two days.
free
Two things you probably did not know
Lepenski Vir is around nine thousand years old and has trapezoidal houses and boulder sculptures with human faces. The whole settlement was lifted and moved thirty metres higher in 1971, because the lake behind the dam would have drowned it.
Trajan's plaque from the year 100, cut into the rock above the Roman road through the gorge, was sliced out of the cliff and raised some twenty metres before the water came. The Roman road below it stayed under the lake.
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Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from The Iron Gates — day trips or weekends.
Serbia
→The north an hour away by train, the mountains three or four by car — Serbia divides by the time you have
Montenegro
→The Bay, the riviera or Ulcinj for the sea, Durmitor for July — choose the coast by its beaches and the north by the month
Greece
→The north by road, the Cyclades by ferry, Rhodes by air — pick the region first and the island second
All 277 places we write about sit on one page — narrow them down by continent, country, price or what you are travelling for.
Within reach from here: Rtanj, Sokobanja and Deliblato Sands
See how much of that actually suits you — or pin The Iron Gates if you have been.
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