The river formed the Ottoman Empire's northern border for centuries. The Danube River in European Culture Over the centuries, the civilizations along the Danube have contributed mightily to some of the most significant artistic movements in European history — and the river itself has inspired a wide range of works across the spectrum: Art The Danube region has spawned everything from the religious art of the Middle Ages, to painting and sculpture of the Renaissance period.
They were among the earliest to engage in pure landscape painting, employing a highly expressive style. A Mozart fan could trace his life and career from his birthplace in Salzburg … to several Vienna apartments where he took up residence… to the Estates Theatre in Prague , where Don Giovanni premiered Today, its collections comprise Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities, sculptures and decorative arts, and significant European paintings from the 14th to 18th centuries.
The Baroque structures of the current complex were built between , and their library holds a remarkable collection of medieval manuscripts from the 12th — 15th centuries. Prague Castle, Prague, Czech Republic: Prague's ancient Hradcany Castle district is dominated by the 1,year-old Prague Castle complex of palaces, courtyards and gardens, the center of government for the kingdom of Bohemia under the Habsburgs for centuries and, later, Czechoslovakia.
Within this complex lies Strahov Monastery and its gorgeous Baroque libraries dating back to the 18th century. In fact, porous rocks in this area result in much of the water of the upper Danube actually seeping through the rocks to join the Rhine watershed, which has a lower elevation. The river is too small for navigation as it winds through the Swabian Alps , passing castles and monasteries, and the ancient German cities of Ulm and Regensburg, once the capital of the Holy Roman Empire.
At Passau, on the border with Austria, the Danube is joined by its first large tributary, the Inn. This was historically the western terminus of commercial river traffic, especially for grain coming to Central Europe from the plains of Hungary, but also for coal and iron ore from as far away as Russia.
In Upper Austria, the Danube passes some of the most famous baroque buildings in Europe, especially Melk, the Versailles of monasteries, perched on a hill above the river valley. Finally the river broadens into the famously smooth and generally muddy brown, not blue Danube as it passes by the capital cities of Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest before turning south to cross the broad Hungarian Plain. This plain, the breadbasket of Central Europe, was also the site of many important battles, from the defeat and forced settling of the Hungarian people by Emperor Otto I in , to the destruction of the native Hungarian kingdom by the Turks at Mohacs in , and the defeat of Turkish forces after the siege of Vienna in , finally halting their progress toward Central Europe.
During Roman times the Danube River was the northernmost boundary of the Roman Empire and as late as AD the full length of the Danube formed the boundary between a crumbling Roman Empire and the barbarian invaders from the steppe lands of Ukraine and Central Asia. The Roman legacy bestowed upon the Danube its importance as a Medieval trade route, whether by boat on the river or along its banks.
This role created important trade and transportation centers all along it, including Regensburg and Ulm in Germany, Linz and Vienna in Austria, Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, Budapest, capital of Hungary, and Belgrade, the former capital of Yugoslavia and now the capital of Serbia. Flooding has been a problem there since Roman times and still is — because of the floods, no major cities developed on the Danube downstream of Belgrade.
Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is 80 km 50 miles uphill from the Danube, well protected from the spring floods. The Danube River and many of its tributaries form the spawning grounds for many fish, but they receive various degrees of treated wastewater from many different sources, which ultimately ends up in the Black Sea , affecting the nutrient levels in a large portion of its waters.
In this sense, the River Danube is the single most important contributor to nutrient pollution in the Black Sea. The Danube River Basin can - based on its gradients - be divided into three sub-regions: the upper basin, the middle basin, and the lower basin including the Danube Delta. The Middle Basin is the largest of the three sub-regions, extending from Bratislava to the dams of the Iron Gate Gorge on the border between Serbia and Romania.
Its tributaries bring in flow from the northern side of the Alps as well as drawing in flow from the southern side of the Central European Highlands. Depths vary from 1 to 8 metres. In its middle section, the Danube looks more like a flatbed river, with around half the speed of the Upper Danube, with low banks and a bed that reaches a width of more than 1. Only in two stretches - at Visegrad Hungary and at the Iron Gates - does the river flow through narrow, canyon-like gorges.
There the river slows down abruptly and loses its transporting capacity, leading to the deposition of enormous quantities of gravel and sand on the riverbed.
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