Drobeta-Turnu Severin

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Dobretu-Turnu Severin in County Mehedinţi

Drobeta-Turnu Severin (pronunciation: /dro'be.ta 'tur.nu se.ve'rin/, Hungarian: Szörényvár) is a city in Mehedinţi County, Oltenia, Romania, on the left bank of the Danube, below the Iron Gates.

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Early Drobeta-Turnu Severin History

The city, which was originally called Drobetae by the Romans, took its later name of Turnu Severin, or the Northern Tower, from a tower on the north bank of the Danube built by the Byzantines, which stood on a small hill surrounded by a deep moat. This was built to commemorate a victory over the Gauls and Marcomanni by the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (222-235).

Near Turnu Severin are the remains of the celebrated Trajan's bridge, the largest in the Empire, built in 103 by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus. The Danube is about 1,200 metres (4,000 feet) broad at this spot. The bridge was composed of twenty arches supported by stone pillars; only two are still visible at low water.

After the retreat of the Roman administration from Dacia, the city was preserved under Roman occupation as a bridgehead on the north bank of the Danube (IV-VI centuries). Destroyed by Huns in the Vth century, the city was rebuilt by Justinian I (527-565). It was in the Middle Ages that the city changed its name to Turnu Severin and became the political center of the Banat of Severin (XIII-th century). The city was claimed and possessed successively by the Kingdom of Hungary and the Wallachian voivodes, and was seized by the Ottoman Empire in 1524. Once under Ottoman occupation, the territory's administration moved to the west of Oltenia, and was centered in Cerneţi.

After the Danube was freed from Ottoman control (as a consequence of the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829), it was decided to build the present city, with a rigorous program (1836), and then the harbor (1858). The building of some industrial factories spurred the redevelopment of the city.

The city experienced growth on multiple levels (economic, urban and social), and in 1972 it received the name of Drobeta-Turnu Severin. In 1992, the first documentary mention of the city, 1,870 years earlier, was commemorated.