DROBETATURNU SEVERIN

city, capital of Mehedinti judet (county), southwestern Romania. It is an important inland port on the Danube near the point where the river leaves the Iron Gate gorge. The original settlement was mentioned by the 2nd-century Greek geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria as Drobeta, a Dacian town made into a castrum (fortified place) by the Romans. The name Turnu Severin, meaning Tower of Severus, came from a tower built to commemorate a victory by the 2nd- and 3rd-century emperor Septimius Severus. The vestigial piers of the Roman bridgebuilt across the Danube for Emperor Trajan by Apollodorus of Damascus in the 2nd centurycan be seen at low water. The Iron Gates Museum contains a model of the bridge. Other architectural ruins are those of the castrum built to guard the bridge, the baths and palaestra, and the remains of a 13th-century church and citadel. The town lapsed until 1833, when the inhabitants of nearby Cerneti were permitted to evacuate their village, which had been burned by the Turks in 1828, and move to Turnu Severin. The city was joined with Drobeta in the 1970s. After World War II the city grew rapidly. A small prewar shipyard was expanded and merged with the railway shops to form the Mechanical Works for Naval Engineering and Railway Wagons. Meat- and food-processing factories and timber mills were constructed. The city is also the centre for tourist excursions to the Iron Gate and Cazane gorges. Pop. (1992 prelim.) 115,526.