Đerdap

Đerdap National Park was established in 1974 in eastern Serbia, along the right bank of the Danube, and protects some 637 km². It is Serbia's largest national park and the counterpart of the Iron Gates Natural Park on the Romanian bank.

The river crosses the southern Carpathians here in the longest and deepest gorge in Europe, with stretches where the channel narrows to barely two hundred metres. The steep topography and the shelter of the canyon create microclimates that have allowed the survival of a Tertiary relict flora, with species that disappeared from the rest of Europe during the glaciations: Turkish hazel, wild lilac, walnut and maples of very restricted distribution.

Its archaeological heritage is of the first order. At Lepenski Vir, inside the park, a Mesolithic and Neolithic settlement of the seventh and sixth millennia BC was excavated, with trapezoidal dwellings and stone sculptures with faces between human and fish, unique in European prehistory; the site was moved before the Iron Gates reservoir flooded its original position. The building of the dams between 1964 and 1984 completely transformed the river's regime and blocked the migration of sturgeon.