Gospođin Vir Watchtower
About
This watchtower controlled Trajan's cliff-cut military road through the Iron Gates and kept watch on the Danube's far bank, finished around 100 CE alongside the road commemorated on the nearby Tabula Traiana. It stood ready for the legions Trajan ferried upriver for both Dacian campaigns. The Đerdap I hydroelectric dam flooded the site in the 1970s, and its exact footprint now lies under the reservoir.
What happened here
A small stone tower with a timber top, sited so that it can see the next one along the line. Half a dozen men live in it. They watch the ground in front, and they watch the tower on either side. A signal — fire and smoke at night, something visible by day — passes a warning down the chain far faster than a rider can, though it can only carry a message that was agreed in advance. The rest of the time it is a lookout post on a road, a river crossing or a frontier line, and the work is boredom punctuated by inspections. Supplies come up from the fort behind. Towers on a frontier stand within sight of each other for hundreds of miles.
Sources
Nearby
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