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"Dracula's Castle" For Sale In Romania
galaad2 writes "Want to own the real castle that may have inspired the legend of Dracula? The Transylvanian castle associated with Vlad the Impaler, who may have been part of the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, is on sale for £40 million ($77 million). Bran Castle, near the historic city of Brasov, in central Romania, draws 450,000 visitors a year because of its association with 15th-century Prince Vlad Tepes III. (Wikipedia points out that Bran Castle's ties to Vlad are weak and disputed.) The local town council has been offered first refusal; they have 30 days to review the offer and then the property will be put on the market."
There's the ruins of one he got some Turkish landowners to build, too. The remains of it overlook the Arges river and it's a bit of a slog to get to it (1500-odd steps). Legend says that he worked rebellious Boyars to death building it.
http://www.draculascastle.com/html/poenari.html
Still, it would be cool to have that castle and enjoy eternal night life... Speaking of eternal night life, here's an even better idea. Every night throw a wild and massive party. Cover charge is 100 Euro per person. 500 Euro gets you your own room to host your own mini-party in true bacchanalian fashion. Or 2500 Euro gets you the dungeon for the evening. On Friday and Saturday, tasteful in-period costumes are mandatory (vampires okay, clowns not okay... rent 'em at the door if you forgot yours). It's like Disney Land but for mature audiences only. Have live DJ competitions where the audience votes and the top prize for the winning DJ is 10% of the take from cover charges or something like that.
It'd be a hell of a blast until it gets shut down for some please-think-of-the-children reason.
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The Castle in Bran *looks* the part. If Disney were to make a real castle, it would look like this. It is well located for access by train from all over the country. I'm not sure it would be a good investment as their door policy isn't exactly difficult to skip around.
Anyway, the castle at Poenari is the real deal, though it is difficult to get there. You have to climb up a very steep mountain side to actually get to the castle, sometimes you are watched by armed guards protecting a nearby Hydro plant or something. The guys had guns, I didn't ask. This castle really was the home of Vlad the Impaler and the slope you climb to reach it once had the decapetated heads of his victims strewn across it on spikes.
The castle itself is actually very small and nobody is ever going to make moey selling tours there (hence Bran is where the tours are sent). It is spooky and very, very cool. It is perched on a teeny tiny outcropping from the mountain and is a really fantastic experience , as I recounted here many years ago http://www.apj.co.uk/tales/vlad.htm#vlad.
...a week ago.
It is really beautiful, and the surrounding village of Bran is extremely nice. The caste is quite small, but very nice, with small corridors, winding stairs, inner terraces and balconies, even a secret passage from Queen's room to King's room. All asymmetric, you can easily get lost in there. The entire thing is in mint condition, but heating in the winter must be a bitch.
As can traffic. A few hours after we left, the whole village got snowed in, and thousands of tourists couldn't leave as the roads were buried in half a metre of snow.