Bran Castle

Bran Castle sits on a rock at the mouth of the Bran pass, the route that for centuries linked Transylvania with Wallachia over the Carpathians, and its whole history follows from that position. The first secure date is 19 November 1377, when King Louis I of Hungary granted the Saxons of Kronstadt, today's Brașov, the right to build a stone castle here at their own cost and with their own labour. It was built to defend the German settlers of the Burzenland rather than as a lordly seat, and it later served as a customs post on the road between the two principalities. Ownership passed back and forth between the Hungarian crown and the city of Brașov, which regained it in 1533, and it kept a military role until the middle of the 18th century.

Its second life began after the First World War. When Transylvania became part of Romania, the Brașov community gave the castle to the royal family in 1920, and it became the favourite retreat of Queen Marie. She had it extensively renovated by the Czech architect Karel Zdeněk Líman, turning a fading border fortress into a romantic royal home within the irregular medieval shell. Her daughter, Princess Ileana, ran a hospital here during the Second World War. The communist regime confiscated the castle in 1948. Under Romania's restitution law it was returned to Ileana's son, Archduke Dominic of Austria, and his sisters in 2006, and since 2009 the family has run it as a private museum, with furniture and art from Queen Marie's time alongside exhibitions on the castle's legends.

Those legends are the reason for its fame abroad, and they are mostly marketing. Bran is sold as Dracula's Castle, but there is no evidence that Bram Stoker knew of it; it is not mentioned in the novel, and the castle he describes does not resemble it. The connection with Vlad III of Wallachia, the historical figure behind the name, is also thin: he passed through the pass more than once, but historians do not place him as a resident, and the old claim that he was imprisoned here is no longer accepted. What the visitor actually finds is more interesting than the myth, a small, well-preserved frontier fortress turned 20th-century royal home. At the foot of the hill, an open-air village museum shows traditional farmhouses and mills of the Bran area.

Getting there

Bran is about 6 km from the town of Zărnești, but the practical base is Brașov, about 25–30 km to the north-east along road DN73. Brașov-Ghimbav International Airport (GHV) is about 24 km away in a straight line. Regular buses run from Brașov's Autogara 2 to Bran, taking about 45 minutes, and Brașov has direct trains and buses from Bucharest. Parking near the castle is private and paid.