Ladislau Fortress
At the entrance to the Danube Cliff, next to the rock “Babacaia”, one can see the city of Ladislau. The fortification on the Romanian shore of the Danube bears the name of the most famous Arpadian king Ladislau (1077 – 1095), who became a saint after his canonization in 1192. He fought in the Clisura de Sus against the Byzantines, trying to conquer the Danube territories. Built on the ruins of a Dacian fortress, the fortress was built of limestone, whuch can be found abundantly in the walls that guard the Danube Strait. On the side of the Danube, the fortress was flanked by two towers, a square observation tower and a cylindrical tower, the other sides of the fortification being protected naturally by very steep slopes. The fortress had two floors, and under the rooms there were the cellars covered with brick vaults.

Coronini Fortress was erected in 1428, during the reign of Sigismund of Luxembourg in Hungary (1387-1437), as a counter-citadel to Golumbac Fortress, sold to the Turks by a Serbian captain.

 

 

Drencova Fortress
The Drencova or Dranko fortress is also a strange appearance, near the waterway, where some ruins come out of the water, for a maximum length of max. 12-13 meters. It was built in the 15th century by German knights, and then belonged to the Hunedoara family. It was set on fire and destroyed several times by the Turkish soldiers, although it was heavily fortified, with thick and 15 meters high walls. The ruins are visible from the national road 57, near the town of Berzasca – Drencova being a village, now flooded by the waters of the river, which belonged to this municipality.

 

 

TRIKULE FORTRESS – “three towers” (“kule” = tower, in Turkish) was erected in the 15th century, to stop the Ottoman expansion to the west, the ruins being observed even now near the town of Svinita, at 5 km downstream.

The TriKule Fortress was represented by three towers on the left bank of the Danube in the form of a triangle, with one of the peaks towards the Danube. In each corner there is a tower with a height of about 10 meters. Tower 1 and tower 2 are at a distance of 20 meters from each other and about 40 meters from tower 3. The TriKule Fortress was flooded following the arrangement of the Iron Gates 1 accumulation lake. Only two towers can be observed, the third being visible only under very low water conditions.

Tower no. 2 is preserved throughout its height and still retains the entire crown. The only damages were caused, before the archaeological research, by the treasure hunters, which caused the lower segment of the southeast corner to collapse. Today, this breach is covered by the waters of the river.

Its masonry attests to two different techniques: in the lower part the joints are slightly deepened, in the middle one they are erased over the surface of the stone, and in the upper part it returns to the technique used for the walls of the ground floor. All three towers were built of very good quality mortar and mortar stone, the stone being extracted from a nearby limestone quarry. Roman brick was used for the crown, and the masonry preserves the traces of the scaffolding used in their construction.

Unfortunately, tower no. 3 was damaged by the Danube ice in the winter of 1924.

 

 

The walls of all the towers have a thickness of 1.4 m, and they had three levels inside, of which the first (ground floor) was used as a supply room and did not communicate with the outside. Access to the dressing room was through a hatch at the level of the first floor. The entrance inside the towers was arranged in one of the walls of this first floor, in the form of an opening, with an embrasure flared inwards.

Although not much data is known about this fortress, the lack of residential type, the lack of windows and fireplaces, lead to the conclusion that it was used only for military purposes.

The ruins are accessible from the town of Svinita, 4 kilometers downstream from this town. They are situated on a kind of spur of the shore so that they cannot be missed.