Top of the World
Golubac Fortress is one of the best preserved medieval fortresses in Europe.On the walls of the magnificent Golubac fortress the “košava” wind breaks the waves of the Danube where the river is possibly most powerful, just before entering the largest gorge in Europe between the mighty Carpathian mountains Like a sad, lonely Byzantine princess, like an eternal vigilant guard by whom no one can slip into the Djerdap gorge (eng. The Iron Gates of the Danube), the famous Golubac fortress has been defying centuries.
Its founder remains unknown and one can guess it originates from the 14th century. It has always been of great significance so everyone wanted it.
Numerous conquerors walked in it considering it their own, but during centuries it only had one master, the Danube, the only one that knows all its secrets. We would like the Danube to tell us who built this perfect fortress on a cliff just by the road, and also which of the legends about its name is true.
One thing is certain, all stories about this fortress are sad, and the saddest one takes us back to the time when this part of Serbia was under the Ottoman rule. A girl named Golubana was the most beautiful in the area. A word was spread about her beauty, and the story came to a cruel Turkish Pasha who fell in love with her. She refused his love. To get his vengeance, the Pasha tied the poor girl to a rock sticking out from the water in the middle of the river opposite the mighty fortress, where she died in pain watching the city that was later named after her. It is supposed that this stone witness of numerous historic revolutions and battles, after Battle of Kosovo (1389) fell in the hands of the Ottoman Empire, and then Golubac was the matter of dispute between two great empires, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires.
Golubac fortress has ten towers. The first and the true builder of this fortress gave it nine towers set in front, back and lower town, but Turks added another tower.
