Peleș Castle

Peleș Castle rises out of the forest above Sinaia, in the Prahova valley of the southern Carpathians, like a Bavarian fairy-tale castle set down in Romania: steep roofs, painted half-timbering, pinnacles and a main tower 66 metres high against the mountains. It was built for King Carol I, a Hohenzollern prince under whose reign Romania won its independence, and who fell for this valley on his first visit in 1866. The foundation stone was laid in 1873; the German architect Johannes Schultz won the commission after Carol rejected three designs as unoriginal copies of Western palaces, Carol Benesch worked on the building, and the Czech architect Karel Liman added the towers between 1893 and 1914. The palace was inaugurated with a royal ball in 1883, the year the first Orient Express passengers from Paris were invited to watch the king set the last brick, and in 1893 the future Carol II was born here.

The style is a romantic mix of Neo-Renaissance and Gothic Revival, with Saxon half-timbered façades and allegorical murals in the inner courtyard, and Baroque-inspired interiors of dark carved wood. More than 170 rooms are each themed — Florentine, Turkish, Moorish, French, Imperial — and filled with an astonishing collection: nearly 2,000 paintings, Sèvres and Meissen porcelain, Córdoba leather, Swiss stained glass, Oriental rugs from Bukhara to Smyrna. The Hall of Honour rises through three floors in carved walnut and exotic woods, with alabaster sculpture and retractable stained-glass panels; the Imperial Suite, decorated in Austrian Baroque for Emperor Franz Joseph, who visited in 1896, keeps a Cordoban tooled-leather wall covering some five centuries old. The armouries hold some 4,000 pieces, from a complete Maximilian armour for horse and rider to Ottoman and Indo-Persian weapons in gold and silver, and a small Louis XIV theatre seats sixty. Peleș was also technically modern: it was the first castle in the world fully powered by its own electricity, from a plant on the estate.

Outside, Italian Renaissance-style terraces step down the hill with Carrara marble statues by Raffaello Romanelli, fountains and guardian lions; Romanelli also made the statue of Carol I that overlooks the main entrance. Queen Elisabeth, the poet Carmen Sylva, filled the house with guests such as George Enescu and Sarah Bernhardt. Seized by the communist state in 1947, the castle became a museum in 1953, was closed to the public by Ceaușescu from 1975, and reopened after 1989; it now belongs again to the royal family and is leased to the state. Nearby stands the smaller Pelișor, built in 1889–1903 as the home of King Ferdinand and Queen Marie.

Getting there

The castle is just northwest of the mountain resort of Sinaia, which lies about 48 km from Brașov and 124 km from Bucharest; the town of Breaza is about 22 km away. Brașov-Ghimbav International Airport (GHV) is about 39 km away.