Rio Danube. The Blue Danube

The River Danube has an exclusive place reserved in the history of the world. It has been a protagonist in fact of sum importance inside the history of the world in aspects as the cultural, economic, political, ecological, natural history and even has lent its name to the famous waltz of the composer Johann Strauss, the Blue Danube.

It is besides, the most long one inside the European Union -2,860 kilometers- and one of the most long of Europe, so alone surpassed by the Volga. This long European river crosses the territory of ten countries, where takes a different name.



In Germany him is known like Donau, in Hungary as Dune, in Croatia as Dunav, in Eslovania as Donava, in Czech Republic as Dunai and other variant in Bulgaria, Slovakia, Serbia, Rumania and Russia. The list extends still more if we add the countries that receive the basin of drainage of the Danube, these countries are Italy, Poland, Swiss, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, the Republic of fruit Salad and Albania.

It thinks that their name stems from the Celtic “one Danu”, that signifies to fly. Another theory exists that advances that the root of the name stems from an Iranian word that has contributed to give him name to other rivers that flow into in the Dead Sea, as for example the Gift, the Donest, the Dnieper and the Dniestr.



The Danube is formed by the union of the German rivers Brigach and Breg to the height of the town Donaueschingen. Since the German Black Forest already him is known like Danube and travels through various countries of Europe central and oriental until flowing into in the Black Sea by means of the Delta of the Danube, shared by Rumania and Ukraine.

The importance of the Danube in the history is initiated approximately does 3.000 to.C., when was the ideal place so that developed cultures as the Vucedol and Vinka. Then it served as border of the Roman Empire approximately in the year 200 d.C. The diverse Germanic tribes used it also that attacked Rome. Had also importance during the Crossed, being an important way to arrive quickly to Holy Land.


In modern epochs has been disputed many times the predominance on the river, nevertheless, has managed to avoid this by means of agreements signed by the member countries of the CIPD, the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube.

This organization is born in the year 1998 with the objective to protect, to promote and to coordinate the sustainability and fair management of the water, included the conservation, improvement and rational utilization for the benefit of the countries and towns that form part of the Danube. Nevertheless, the treaties that have preserved the integrity of the river went back to the tried Paris in 1856, the tried Versailles in 1919, among others.

The Danube is also source of drinking water for near ten million people, also functions like route of commercial transportation of the European Union and is route obliged for the tourists that visit the old world.