Svinița, Mehedinți County · the Danube, on the Serbian border
Tricule Fortress at Svinița, Romania: ice cut the third tower down in 1924, the Iron Gates lake only covered what was left
The name Tricule means “three towers”, yet two rise from the Danube. The third stood about 12 metres in 1915; ice left it 3 metres high in 1924, and the reservoir, which came almost half a century later, covered what remained.
Why “three”, if only two can be seen
The name says three towers, and OpenStreetMap has three tower ruins drawn on the same spot. How much of the third shows depends on the water level.
- Tower visible today (outline from OpenStreetMap)
- Tower 3: documented, mostly under water today
- Place covered by the same lake
- Dam
- Town or village
Where
On the Danube’s north bank, facing Serbia
Tricule Fortress stands near Svinița, a village in Mehedinți County in southwest Romania. The towers rise on the left, northern bank of the Danube; the opposite bank is Serbian. From the towers to the Iron Gates I dam it is 37 km in a straight line, downstream.
The point on the map is the OpenStreetMap node “Tricule Fortress”, at 44.48° N, 22.143° E; Wikidata (Q44013106) gives the same position.
The lake
Today the towers stand in the Iron Gates lake
The Iron Gates I reservoir stretches upstream of the dam, past Svinița. On the OpenStreetMap map, the outlines of all three towers lie inside the outline of the lake. Work on the dam began on 7 September 1964, and it was inaugurated on 16 May 1972.
The dam, the relocated villages and the island of Ada Kaleh have their own pages: the Iron Gates and Ada Kaleh, the island that lies under the same lake.
The name
Tri kule: “three towers”
Tricule comes from tri kule: three towers — but the phrase is South Slavic, not Turkish.
In Serbian, tri means “three” and kule is the form of kula, “tower”, used after tri. Kula belongs to an old Balkan family of words for “tower”, traditionally linked to the Turkish kule; the exact route of the borrowing is debated. The Romanian culă belongs to the same family.
The plan
A triangle pointing at the Danube
The three quadrangular towers formed a triangle pointing at the Danube. The two upper ones stood about 20 metres apart; the third, lower and toward the water, about 40 metres from them, on its own rock.
On the plan drawn to scale from the OpenStreetMap outlines, the walls of the first two towers are 22 m apart, and the third tower is between 35 and 43 m from the other two.
OpenStreetMap does not number the towers. Tower 3 is the southernmost, toward the water, as the National Archaeological Repertory (RAN) describes it: “the southernmost, built toward the water”.
The towers
Dwelling towers with 1.4-metre walls
Archaeologists class them as dwelling towers, quadrangular donjons: walls about 1.4 metres thick, entrances raised above the ground, storeys divided by wooden floors, firing openings.
RAN gives each tower’s size: 6.7 by 6.5 metres (tower 1), 7.2 by 6.3 (tower 2) and 7 by 7.5 (tower 3). Towers 1 and 2 kept their original crenellation, with firing slits. Tower 3 was built straight on the natural rock, toward the water.
The age
The towers are not Roman
The National Archaeological Repertory states plainly that attributing the visible ensemble to the Roman period is wrong: the three towers are medieval, archaeologically dated to the 13th–14th centuries.
The error sits in Romania’s List of Historic Monuments (LMI code MH-I-s-B-10100), which RAN corrects. RAN also records older layers on the same site: Hallstatt (Early Iron Age) pottery, Roman (2nd–3rd and 4th centuries) and early medieval (11th–13th centuries, with a coin from the time of the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos, who reigned 1143–1180). The towers overlie these occupations, which probably explains the confusion.
- Where
- North bank of the Danube, about 4 km downstream of the village of Svinița, Mehedinți County (RAN)
- When
- 13th–14th centuries, by archaeological excavation
- Name
- Tri Kule, “three towers”, a South Slavic form; also spelt Tricule, Trikule or Trei Cule
- Today
- Two towers above the water; the foundation of the third shows only when the Danube falls (RAN)
Where the third one went
The third tower is the southernmost, the one toward the water.
In 1915 the lower tower was still a massive building, about 12 metres tall, with a roof. In 1924 Danube ice cut it down to about 3 metres from its base. When the river’s level was raised for Iron Gates I, what remained went under water — its foundation shows even today, at very low water.
The dam covered only the tower's remains: ice had taken the top almost half a century earlier. The remains normally lie underwater.
- Tower visible today
- Tower 3: mostly under water today
- Outline of today’s lake
1865
Three towers standing
An engraving in the Hungarian magazine Hazánk s a Külföld shows the three towers still standing in 1865. It is unsigned and gives no measurements, so their height cannot be read from it.
Engraving
1915
The lower tower, about 12 metres
The 1915 photograph, which RAN describes, shows tower 3 as a massive construction with altered crenellation and a single-pitch roof. Its height has been estimated at about 12 metres. RAN adds that at high water the tower stays isolated in the middle of the water, 7 metres from the foot of the hill that forms the bank.
Photograph
1924
Ice cuts the tower to 3 metres
In 1924 Danube ice cut tower 3 down to a height of 3 metres from its base. Of the roughly 12 metres in the photograph, about 9 metres were gone.
RAN record
1970
The last dig, stopped by the water
The Iron Gates Region Museum, in Drobeta-Turnu Severin, carried out a rescue excavation in October 1970 and the first days of November. One of its two trenches ran 40 metres down the slope south of tower 1, to the edge of the water. The work could not continue the next year, because the Danube had risen after the dam at Gura Văii, the Iron Gates I dam, was closed.
Excavation
1971–1972
The lake covers what was left
With the water raised, what remained of tower 3 went under water; Iron Gates I was inaugurated on 16 May 1972. Between the ice of 1924 and the rise of the water, around 1971, roughly 47 years passed.
The water level at Svinița before and after the lake does not appear in the sources used here. The water in the drawing is schematic.
The lake
Today
Two towers above the water
The RAN record, last modified on 20 October 2021, says two towers are visible at the surface and the foundation of the third shows only when the Danube falls. The state of conservation is poor.
RAN record
Ice first, then the lake
The short story, “the dam drowned a tower”, skips the first event. Ice took the height of tower 3, in 1924: about 9 metres of about 12 metres. The lake then rose over the 3-metre stump.
The sources leave several things open: the water level at the tower before and after the lake, the depth at which the stump lies today, and even the 12-metre height, which RAN calls approximate, from a photograph.
On the lake that also covered the island of Ada Kaleh: the Iron Gates, Ada Kaleh.
Three towers — but which fortress?
In 1429 a fortress called Zynicze appears in the Iron Gates Danube chain, entrusted to the Teutonic Knights under Redwitz. The report gives it a garrison of 46 men. Document
Zynicze is often identified with Tricule, but the literature leaves open whether the towers were an outpost of a Svinița fortress not yet identified on the ground. Disputed identification
In Snider’s military analysis, the small three-tower form and the 46-man garrison suggest an observation point in the chain. The interpretation is Snider’s. Interpretation
Sources
Stone first, document after it; dictionaries give the senses, scholarship gives the interpretations. English renderings by Marius Comper.
Archaeology and history
- National Archaeological Repertory (RAN), the Svinița – Tri-Kule site, RAN 113616.03 (record modified 20 October 2021): the 13th–14th-century dating, the towers’ dimensions, the 1915 photograph, the 1924 cut, the foundation visible at low water, the 1970 excavation, the older layers, the correction of the Roman attribution. The record calls the lake “Porțile de Fier IV”, a slip: the same record ties the end of the dig to the closing of the dam at Gura Văii, which is Iron Gates I, and OpenStreetMap puts the towers inside the Iron Gates I lake. ran.cimec.ro
- Corvătescu and Rădulescu, “Despre ansamblul fortificat de la Tricule-Svinița”, Tibiscus V, 1979, 169–182: the report of the 1970 rescue excavation.
- Bălărie, “Turnurile-locuință de la Svinița”, Banatica 20/1, 2010, 237–254: typology (quadrangular donjons, raised entrances, wooden floors), architecture, chronology, the 1924 event, the rocky spur covered by silt. Bălărie’s article is in Banatica, the journal of the Banat Montan Museum in Reșița. biblioteca-digitala.ro (PDF)
- Dumitru Țeicu, Cetăți medievale din Banat (medieval fortresses of the Banat region), 2009: the Zynicze identification; the later discussion leaves the outpost hypothesis open. biblioteca-digitala.ro (PDF)
- Snider, “A Military Analysis of the Iron Gates Castle Chain Entrusted to the Teutonic Order (1429–c. 1436)”, Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 26, 2020, 161–176: the 1429 chain, the 46-man garrison, the observation role (analysis). ams.ceu.edu (PDF)
- Feneșan, Cavalerii Teutoni în Banatul Severinului: transcription of the Redwitz reports (OBA 27837), through Snider.
Period sources
- Hazánk s a Külföld, no. 14, 2 April 1865, unsigned work: the engraving of the three towers. Wikimedia Commons (scan, public domain)
Dictionaries and linguistics
- DEX (the Romanian explanatory dictionary), culă (from Tk. kula; cf. Bulg., Serb. kula). dexonline.ro
- Saldzhiev, “On the Etymology of the Old Bulgarian Lexeme сынъ and Middle Bulgarian Lexeme коула”, Linguistique balkanique 63/2, 2024, 87–96: why the Turkish mediation of kula is debated. ceeol.com (abstract)
The dam
- Hidroelectrica, Romania’s state hydropower producer, fifty years after the opening of the Iron Gates I system (16 May 1972). thediplomat.ro
- “Amenajarea hidroenergetică a Dunării”, Știință și inginerie: works started on 7 September 1964. stiintasiinginerie.ro (PDF)
The map
- OpenStreetMap: the Iron Gates lake (relation 1570331), the dam (way 28270536), the node “Cetatea Tricule” (node 1270293744), the three tower ruins (ways 1445766081, 1445766082, 1445769512), the villages, roads, buildings and woods of the Svinița bend. © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. openstreetmap.org. OpenStreetMap does not number the towers; tower 3 is the southernmost, toward the water, after RAN’s description.
- Relief in the close plans: AWS Terrain Tiles (Terrarium), Mapzen data from SRTM and other sources, computed as hillshade. registry.opendata.aws
- Natural Earth 1:10m: country outlines and the Danube (public domain). naturalearthdata.com
- Relief in the wide plan: the map of the project Atlasul istoriei României.
- Wikidata, Q44013106 (Tricule Fortress) and Q346141 (Ada Kaleh); town coordinates from Wikidata. wikidata.org