Decebal was the last Dacian king to be surrounded by Trajan's troops in his capital, Sarmizegetusi, where he committed suicide in 106. It was also the end of Trajan's great Roman campaign on Dacia, which was prepared for a long time by building a complete infrastructure on the Serbian, right bank of the Danube (road, bridge, fortifications). Decebal or Diurfaneus, whose name translates as "the power of the Dacians", ruled Dacia from 87 to 106. He managed to unite the conflicting tribes and the scattered people across the expanses of today's Romania. To the Romans, Dacia was most interesting because of the gold mines.

An order was supposedly found in the nearby locality of Diana, with which Trajan supposedly decorated General Maximus when he brought him Decebalus' head and right hand as proof that Dacia had been conquered. Maximus kicked his head down the stairs and triumphantly exclaimed that this was how the enemies of Rome passed.

Due to his long-lasting fight against the enemy, Decebal gained the status of a hero among today's inhabitants of Romania. His figure was symbolically carved just across from Trajan's board on the Serbian side, in order to defy this Roman emperor forever.

"The Danube is like the sea that the gods created for themselves", "We have the most beautiful kilometers of the Danube in Serbia", are just some of the statements with which everyone who is fascinated by this landscape agrees. Of particular interest is the flow of the Danube through our largest national park, the Djerdap Geopark, which covers an area of ​​1,330 square kilometers, encompassing extraordinary sites and phenomena of a geological nature.

Near Trajan's tablet, on the Romanian side of the Danube, a huge stone sculpture 40 meters high rises above Djerdap: The face of the king Decebalus carved into the rock.

Many, less informed passers-by, would at first think that the sculpture dates back to ancient times, and in fact it was completed in 2004, after 10 years of work by 12 stonemason-climbers. First, a high cliff had to be cleared of trees, which can only be reached by boat. The workers lived on the ship and worked in two shifts, with the help of pneumatic hammers and a lot of dynamite. It is believed that a million and a half dollars were invested in the statue.

Decebal's sculpture is the largest carved sculpture in Europe. Decebal's eye is 4.3 meters long, and his nose is seven meters long and four meters wide. It is only 6 m lower than the New York Statue of Liberty.

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