The Iron Gate (Romanian Porțile de Fier; Serbian Ђердап, Đerdap) is a gorge of the Danube. It is located in the southern Carpathians, more precisely between the Serbian Carpathians and the Banat Mountains, on the border of Serbia and Romania. Until it was defused in 1972 in connection with the Iron Gate 1 power plant, it was considered the most dangerous section of the Danube for shipping, which could not be passed without local pilots. For decades, the ships were towed upstream with locomotives.
The Iron Gate is considered one of the most impressive gorges in Europe.[1] At the Cazan or Kazan (German: Cauldron) between the towns of Orșova and Donji Milanovac, the Danube is narrowed to 200 meters wide; In this section it was already 50 m deep before the dam was built, so that the bottom of the river is 15 m below sea level. Because of the steep walls of the gorge, the current reservoir is not much wider than the natural riverbed in some places, despite the water level being raised (at the dam by 20 m to 62 m above sea level). Protected areas have been established on both sides of the Danube - in Serbia the Đerdap National Park, on the Romanian side the Iron Gate Nature Park (Parcul Natural Porțile de Fier).