The small island that disappeared to make way for Romania’s largest hydropower plant

The Portile de Fier/Iron Gates National Park, at the border with Serbia, is one of the most beautiful places one can visit in the country. The park stands at the crossroads of two historical regions, Banat and Oltenia, and two counties, Caras Severin and Mehedinti, near the Danube River between Bazias and Gura Vaii. It is also home to the biggest hydroelectric facility in Romania, the Iron Gates hydro-power plant. What today’s traveler can no longer see in the area is the small island of Ada Kaleh. The island used to stand some 3 km downstream from Orşova, a port city on the Danube, in Mehedinti county. It was less than two kilometers long and approximately half a kilometer wide. The island used to have mostly a Turkish population, who lived off fishing and the cultivation of tobacco. It was a property of the Ottoman Sultan until 1923 when it became Romanian territory following the Treaty of Lausanne, by which the new Republic of Turkey officially ceded the island to Romania. Ada Kaleh was submerged in 1970, during the construction of the Iron Gates hydropower plant. It had at the time a population of 600 people, who relocated to Constanta, a Romanian area with a significant Turkish minority, or to Turkey. The structures built on the island included a mosque, a Vauban-type fort, a bazaar, Mahmut Pasha's house, and a graveyard. Some of these were relocated to the nearby Şimian Island at the time the Iron Gates dam was built. Among them, the Ada Kaleh Mosque was built in 1903 on the site of a Franciscan monastery. The carpet of the mosque, a gift from the Turkish Sultan Abdülhamid II, was relocated to the Constanta Mosque in 1965. Several other artifacts from the island can now be admired at the recently opened Iron Gates Region Museum. The museum, located in Orsova, has three exhibition spaces dedicated to nature, the historical-archaeological and ethnographic heritage of the area. The Orsova museum is a branch of the Drobeta Turnu Severin museum of the same name. Travel planner: Romania’s Iron Gates/ Portile de Fier National Park Romania could have a second biosphere reserve after the Danube Delta editor@romania-insider.com (Photo source: Wikipedia)