49 Fun Facts About Danube River

The Danube is Europe's second-longest river after which?

The Volga. It runs about 3,500 km without ever leaving Russia, while the Danube's 2,850 km take it through or along ten countries.

Into which sea does the Danube empty?

The Black Sea. The silt the river carries has built a delta at its mouth, and new land is still forming where its arms reach the sea.

Which country has less than a kilometre of the Danube's bank?

Moldova. Its bank at Giurgiulești is only a few hundred metres long, yet the country has built its only port open to seagoing ships on it.

Which four national capitals stand on the Danube?

Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade. The third only became a single city in 1873, when Buda and Óbuda on the west bank merged with Pest on the east.

The Danube takes its name at the meeting of the Brigach and Breg in which German town?

Donaueschingen. The town presents a spring beside its palace as the place where the river begins, but hydrologists count the spring of the larger Breg near Furtwangen instead.

The Danube rises in which German mountain range?

The Black Forest. Its headstreams, the Breg and the Brigach, rise on the range's eastern slopes, so a river born in Germany's south-west corner ends up on the far side of Europe.

The ancient Greeks knew the Danube by which name?

Istros. A Greek colony founded near the river's mouth carried the same name, and the Romans kept it as Ister alongside their own Danubius.

The 'Shoes on the Danube Bank' memorial to Jews shot at the river in 1944–45 stands in which city?

Budapest. Sixty pairs of iron shoes line the embankment because Arrow Cross militiamen made their victims take off their footwear, valuable in wartime, before shooting them into the river.

At Passau, which Alpine tributary joins the Danube carrying more water than the Danube itself?

The Inn. Where they meet it is the bigger river, yet its catchment is far smaller than the one the Danube has gathered by then, and the smaller stream keeps the name.

The highest point in the Danube's drainage basin, Piz Bernina, rises in which country the river never reaches?

Switzerland. Meltwater from the 4,049-metre peak runs down the Engadin valley and on through Austria to meet the Danube in Bavaria.

The Danube's middle section, downstream of the Devín Gate near Bratislava, crosses which lowland?

The Pannonian Basin. The Romans held only the part west and south of the river as their province of Pannonia, with the Danube as the frontier, yet the whole lowland now carries the name.

Which UNESCO-listed stretch of the Danube valley between Melk and Krems is known for its terraced vineyards?

The Wachau. UNESCO listed it in 2000 because its abbeys, castle ruins and vine terraces show how the valley has been lived in and farmed since prehistoric times.

The Mesolithic village of Lepenski Vir, known for its stone sculptures, lies on the Danube in which gorge?

The Iron Gates. The settlement came to light in the 1960s only because a hydroelectric dam was about to flood the bank, and archaeologists were racing to explore it first.

The Danube Delta lies mostly in which country?

Romania. A few thousand years ago none of it existed: the site was an open bay, which the river's silt has since filled to make the best-preserved delta in Europe.

Which plant forms vast beds and even floating islands in the Danube Delta's marshes?

Reeds. Their matted roots form floating islands known locally as plaur, and the cut stems have been used to make paper and textile fibres.

The Danube's Chilia arm forms part of which country's southern border?

Ukraine. The Chilia carries the largest share of the river's flow, yet it was the far smaller Sulina arm that engineers straightened and dredged to take seagoing ships.

The canal that has linked the Danube to the North Sea since 1992 runs from Kelheim to Bamberg on which river?

The Main. Charlemagne had a ditch dug between the two river systems as early as 793, and the modern canal lifts barges over the watershed through 16 locks.

The canal finished in 1984 lets ships leave the Danube at Cernavodă and reach the sea at which port?

Constanța. Work began in 1949 and was abandoned in 1953; the canal finally opened in 1984 and cuts some 400 km off the trip between the river and the sea.

Ocean-going ships can sail up the Danube only as far as which city?

Brăila. Though it lies about 170 km from the river's mouth, the channel below it takes small and medium ocean-going ships, which turns an inland town into a seaport.

What happens to the upper Danube at the Donauversickerung on many summer days?

It sinks completely underground. The water drains away through porous limestone, leaving the bed below it dry on well over a hundred days a year.

Geologists predict the Danube's upper course will one day be lost entirely to which river?

The Rhine. Its bed lies far lower, so Danube water already leaks to it through the limestone, and before the last ice age the Alpine rivers that now feed it flowed east instead.

The Aachtopf spring near the upper Danube holds what German record?

Highest-flow wellspring. It pours out about 8,500 litres a second on average, enough to launch a small river, the Radolfzeller Aach, straight from the rock.

Which Persian king crossed the Danube in the late 6th century BCE to attack the Scythians?

Darius the Great. The Scythians would not stand and fight: they devastated the land as they fell back, and for lack of supplies he had to abandon the campaign.

Which Roman emperor bridged the Danube near Drobeta in order to conquer Dacia?

Trajan. His architect Apollodorus of Damascus set timber arches on masonry piers so that the legions could march across for the second war against the Dacians.

From the 15th to the 19th century the lower Danube marked the northern border of which power?

The Ottomans. North of the river they let Wallachia keep its own princes in return for tribute, instead of annexing it as they had the lands to the south.

Which 1526 battle near the Danube cost Hungary's King Louis II his army and his life?

Mohács. The young king died in the flight from the field, and the defeat opened the way for his kingdom to be divided between the victors and the Habsburgs.

Which animal, hunted to extinction along the Bavarian Danube in the 19th century, was brought back in the 1960s and has thrived?

The beaver. From the animals conservationists released, Bavaria's stock has grown into the thousands, and their dams now slow floodwater and create wetlands that shelter other wildlife.

Six threatened species of which fish are native to the Danube basin?

Sturgeon. Two big dams built across the river in the 1970s and 1980s had no fish passes, cutting the migrants off from their spawning grounds upstream.

Which large salmon species is endemic to the Danube basin?

The huchen. Nicknamed the Danube salmon, it spends its whole life in fresh water, and dam-building on its home rivers has left it endangered.

The 1856 treaty opening the Danube to all nations' ships ended which war?

The Crimean War. The peace treaty opened the river to ships of every nation and created a European commission to keep it open, the forerunner of today's Danube Commission.

Danube shipping was disrupted in 1999 when NATO bombed three bridges in which country?

Serbia. The wrecked spans at Novi Sad, and the pontoon bridge put up to replace them, went on obstructing river traffic until 2005.

At which Bavarian city, known for its 12th-century Stone Bridge, does the Danube reach its northernmost point?

Regensburg. For centuries its Stone Bridge was the only one over the river between Ulm and Vienna, which made the city a major centre of trade and government.

The root of the name Danube, an ancient word for 'river', also survives in the name of which river?

The Don. The same Indo-European root, danu, is thought to lie behind the Dnieper and the Dniester as well, so several of eastern Europe's great rivers are simply called 'river'.

Which river joins the Danube at Belgrade, beneath the Kalemegdan fortress?

The Sava. With the Drava and the Tisza it is one of three big tributaries that between them more than double the Danube's flow as it crosses the plain.

Which English king was jailed in Dürnstein Castle above the Danube?

Richard I. Duke Leopold of Austria, whose banner the Lionheart had thrown down from the walls of Acre, seized him near Vienna in 1192 on his way home from the Third Crusade.

Which Austrian composer wrote The Blue Danube waltz?

Johann Strauss II. He first wrote it as a choral piece for a men's singing society, and only afterwards arranged the purely orchestral version that is played today.

The Romanian waltz 'Waves of the Danube' by Iosif Ivanovici became famous in English under what title?

Anniversary Song. Al Jolson gave the tune that title when he and Saul Chaplin put English words to the 1880 waltz in 1946.

Which author wrote the 1908 novel The Danube Pilot about fisherman Serge Ladko?

Jules Verne. The novel appeared three years after his death, heavily revised by his son Michel, as most of his posthumous books were.

Which Italian writer's 1986 book Danube follows the river from its sources to the delta?

Claudio Magris. A professor of German literature from Trieste, he turns the journey into a long essay on Central Europe's peoples, books and ideologies.

Which country's national anthem opens with the proud Balkan Mountains and the Danube flowing beside them?

Bulgaria. Tsvetan Radoslavov wrote both the words and the tune of 'Mila Rodino', 'Dear Homeland', in 1885, though it did not become the national anthem until 1964.

Hungary's first permanent Danube crossing (1849), linking Buda and Pest, is commonly called what?

The Chain Bridge. An Englishman named Clark designed it and an unrelated Scot named Clark built it, guarding the half-finished span through the fighting of the 1848 revolution.

A 2026 Danube drought exposed over 20 warships near Prahovo, scuttled in 1944 by which country's navy?

Germany. Its crews sank their own ships to slow the Soviet advance as German forces pulled out, and the same drought also bared a mammoth's bones further downstream.

Which Hungarian nuclear plant had to cut output when low Danube levels reduced its cooling water in 2026?

Paks. Hungary's only nuclear plant normally generates close to half the country's electricity, so the 2026 low water on the river that cools it set off a national energy crisis.

The Danube Bike Trail runs from the river's source to its mouth; which section is by far the longest?

Budapest to the sea. Budapest stands less than halfway down the river, so that last section is longer than the three upstream ones put together.

Which Weather Report co-founder wrote the symphony Stories of the Danube, first performed in Linz in 1993?

Joe Zawinul. Born in Austria, he wrote it for the Brucknerhaus concert hall, which staged the premiere as a huge open-air show at that year's Bruckner Festival.

Which author's eerie short story 'The Willows' is set mostly on the Danube?

Algernon Blackwood. In the 1907 story two friends canoeing downriver camp on a flooded sandbar among the willows, and something unseen begins to close in on them.

The 16th-century painters known as the Danube school worked in which countries' tradition?

German and Austrian. Its painters, led by Albrecht Altdorfer, were among the first in Europe to paint pure landscape, with nature and not people as the subject.

Which orchestra plays The Blue Danube as an encore at its televised New Year's Concert every 1 January?

The Vienna Philharmonic. The audience breaks into the opening bars with applause, and the conductor and players stop to wish them a happy new year before starting again.

Which 1704 victory of the Duke of Marlborough was fought beside the Danube in Bavaria?

Blenheim. Marlborough had marched his army some 400 km from the Low Countries to the river in five weeks, and Queen Anne rewarded him with the estate where Blenheim Palace was built.