Mehadia

The town is located on the site of the ancient Roman colony Ad Mediam and was noted for its Hercules baths.

The commune is composed of four villages: Globurău (Golbor), Mehadia, Plugova (Ekés), and Valea Bolvașnița (Bolvásvölgy).

[5] Linguist Cicerone Poghirc proposed that the Romans had adopted a hypotethical (non-attested) native *Mehedia or *Mehadia form.

[6] Most linguists agree that the Romanians adopted the medieval Hungarian name of the town which was first recorded as Michald in 1323.

[7][8] During the continent floods of 1910, Mehadia suffered serious loss to farms and property and several hundred people died; 600 houses were destroyed.

Beyond Topleț to the south is Orșova, which was for many years the residence of a Pasha and contained a prominent Turkish fortress.

[10] The road to Mehadia passes through a broad forested scenic valley and crosses a Roman Aqueduct.

Eye treatment is also arranged with the spring water, apart from the therapeutic healing powers for scrofula, joint pains, chronic rheumatism, gout, indolent skin diseases, complicated mercurial afflictions, hysteria, hypochondria ad many other “opprobria medica”.

They are built in narrow “Platz” with a statue of Hercules in the middle, placed over spout shaped like a crocodile from which the clear spring water emerges.

The houses are painted in pale green or yellow colour, have high roofs with overhanging eves and with brownish tiles in the backdrop of the rocky mountains.

[16] The native colourful dresses which the women wear is described as “The Obrescha, a broad girdle with red fringe hanging to the instep and worn over the white shift, gives them occasionally, as they walk along the road with the long disheveled web flaunting in the wind, a wild witch like air”.

[8] Epigraphical information read at the base of the Roman champ provides link to the Cohors III Delmatarum.

In the constricted area of the Roman champ, "a circular military vicus", which extends along the Bela Reka River up to the thermae has also been identified.

Further, excavations have also revealed "the Capitolium of the civilian settlement at Praetorium – Mehadia", which has a temple built by the soldiers of the Cohors III Delmatarum ¥.

1788 Battle in Mehadia valley
Mehadia in 1835
Postcard of Mehadia in 1918
Women of Mehadia in traditional dress
Plan of the Roman Castra of Mehadia (also known as Praetorium ), published in the 1726 work Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus , Vol. 2 by the Italian naturalist and soldier Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1658–1730).