Meet the PlaceCRAFT Regions I Iron Gates Natural Park - Romania

A PlaceCRAFT series introducing the five pilot regions and the activities taking place within them.

Across the Danube Region, PlaceCRAFT works with five pilot communities, each shaped by its own history, culture and challenges. In this series, we take a closer look at these places: their landscapes, communities and heritage, and the range of activities, from workshops to cultural and touristic initiatives, being carried out to support their revitalization.

Iron Gates Natural Park - Romania

About the Region

The Iron Gates Natural Park is a dramatic cultural landscape at the southern edge of the Western Carpathians, shaped by the Danube, Nera and Cerna river corridors. The Danube gorges, forested mountain ridges and panoramic viewpoints make it one of the most striking stretches of the Danube region.

Within this wider territory sits a network of seven Czech villages in the Almăj Mountains, established in the early 19th century by settlers brought here by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. These villages have kept their own language, architecture, crafts, communal ovens, terraced orchards and traditions across two centuries. Today they are remote and sparsely populated, but their communities are actively working to build a future rooted in what makes them distinctive.

Visitors can explore these villages, with their traditional wooden houses, terraced orchards and living crafts, alongside the historic mining landscapes around Bigăr and Eibenthal. Local gastronomy, smoked meats, forest-foraged dishes, Czech pastries and homemade syrups, adds a distinctive culinary dimension, alongside cultural walks, seasonal festivals and craft workshops rooted in place and memory.

The Pilot Focus

The Iron Gates pilot works across three scales at once: the wider Natural Park, the network of seven Czech villages, and the pilot site of Bigăr. The core challenge is that the region's cultural and natural assets are strong but isolated from each other. Communities don't always recognise their own traditions, architecture and landscapes as assets worth sharing, infrastructure is limited, the seven villages differ significantly in accessibility and tourism readiness, and decades of economic decline after the closure of local industry still shape everyday realities.

The project focuses on co-creation with local communities, strengthening their capacity to shape public spaces and develop tourism experiences rooted in local values. Activities include stakeholder workshops, co-creation sessions in the Czech villages, and field explorations across the cultural landscape. Upcoming pilot interventions in Bigăr will focus on small-scale, low-impact improvements that support local hosts and make the village more accessible and legible for visitors.