Our major plan in Romania for this trip is to visit Dobrogea, an area of Romania that was part of the Roman Empire far longer than the rest of the country and was also colonized previously by the Greeks. As such it has a lot of ruins and monuments that we plan on visiting during our five day visit. We start from Bucharest and use the motorway east, it is an easy drive as soon as we exit Bucharest. What surprises as on the motorway, compared to other countries, is that there are no real rest areas even those marked as such have no facilities in most cases.
As we approach Dobrogea we deviate from the motorway and start using normal highways to make our way to the original bridge over the Danube at Giurgeni-Vadu Oii. The reason for this is both our first goal of the day, Capidava, but also on opportunity to see more of the country including a short stop in Slobozia, a country capital we haven’t visited before. We plan to visit the museum but given that we don’t find any suitable safe parking nearby we just walk through the park outside before returning to the car.
We cross the danube on the old bridge, it is quite a loarge crossing really and then try to find our first goal for the day in Harsova, the Carsium Fortress. While we do get next to it we do not find any access point and the area has no parking and looks slightly sketchy so we decide to move on to the next stop on our list.
Capidava Fortress is the next stop and like Carsium it was built on the shore of the Danube to protect from invaders on the other side. Both were part of the defensive frontier system of the Moesian Limes protecting Moesia Inferior, a ancient Roman province comprised of Northern Bulgaria and Dobrogea, from invasion. In contrast with Carsium Capidava however is well prepared to receive visitors with a large parking lot and even a visitor center which, surprise, is closed. At least we can get tickets and then walk towards the reconstructed fortress which looks quite magnificent.
Interestingly there is a story that the fortress itself was restored as a bid to become an Unesco World Heritage Site. However due to corruption lots of funds when missing and the alterations that were made during the rehabilitation project were quite controversial so it has become less likely to become a World Heritage Site afterwards. What a bummer, as the site seems interesting enough and would benefit from more foot traffic. As is besides us there is only one more group visiting the site, which is great for us as we enjoy exploring in peace.
There are many nooks and crannies to explore, most of them in the reconstructed area so we wonder how much of that is actual and how much is imagination but it is quite interesting nevertheless.
You can both walk among the ruins and walk on an elevated walkway and we do both as we explore the beautiful ruins while avoiding the many wasps which seem to have decided this is their fortress and are out in force.
The fortress like all the others in this defensive line is built on the Danube River, both for easy resupply and to ensure that no barbarians cross the river. They did a relatively bad job at that being destroyed by the Goths first and after being rebuilt being destroyed again by Pechenegs in the 11th century and never being rebult again.
During the time it served as fortress and after Christianity became the empire’s religion it served also as an episcopal center with a church being situated inside the fortified area. It has been excavated and you can still see the floor, quite interesting. What we find even more interesting is that there is still a huge area which is not yet excavated, we wonder what they will find when they will get to it in the future? But sadly soon we have to go, it is time to move to the next attraction for the day, the Adamclisi Tropaeum Traiani monument.
