Rock Sculpture of Decebalus

Where the Danube squeezes through the Iron Gates gorge between Romania and Serbia, a bearded face stares out of the cliffs above the water: Decebalus, the last king of Dacia, who fought Rome and lost to the emperor Trajan at the start of the second century. The portrait is carved directly into a rock outcrop at the Mraconia bay, on the Romanian bank between Eșelnița and Dubova, upstream of Orșova. More than forty metres tall (most sources give around 55 metres, including the rock base), it is usually described as the tallest rock relief in Europe, and from a boat on the river it looms like something from a much older age than it is.

It is in fact very recent. The rock was bought in the early 1990s by Iosif Constantin Drăgan, a Romanian businessman living abroad, and the work ran for about ten years, finishing in 2004. Twelve sculptors took part under the lead of Florin Cotarcea from Orșova; an initial model and assessment came from the Italian sculptor Mario Galeotti. The first years went on blasting the outcrop into rough shape, the last ones on refining the face: the heavy brows, the eyes set deep under them and the thick beard. Under the chin runs a Latin inscription, DECEBALUS REX - DRAGAN FECIT, "King Decebalus - made by Drăgan", which says as much about the patron as about the king.

What makes the place remarkable is its setting and its dialogue with the past. Almost directly across the river, on the Serbian bank, the Roman Tabula Traiana still hangs on the cliff, a plaque commemorating the road Trajan built through the gorge during his campaigns against the Dacians. The defeated king now faces the victor's inscription across the water. The carving itself grew out of a late twentieth-century current in Romania that celebrated Dacian roots, and it is best read both ways: as spectacle, and as a modern monument about national origins set into one of the wildest stretches of the Danube.

The narrow gorge around the Mraconia bay is one of the most dramatic river landscapes in Europe, and boat trips add the small Mraconia monastery at the water's edge and the Ponicova and Veterani caves in the limestone walls, all on the same short stretch of river.

Getting there

The sculpture stands on the Romanian bank of the Danube upstream of Orșova, in Mehedinți County; the larger city of Drobeta-Turnu Severin is about 29 km away by straight line. The nearest Romanian airport is Timișoara Traian Vuia International Airport (TSR), about 150 km away; Niš Constantine the Great Airport in Serbia (INI) is at a similar distance across the border. The face is visible from the riverside road DN57 at the Mraconia viaduct, but the classic view is from the water: boat tours run from Orșova and from Dubova, usually combining the statue with the Tabula Traiana, the Mraconia monastery and the gorge's caves.