No doubt you’ve heard of castles built for kings, archdukes, local lords and medieval rulers. But how about one with ties to a fictional Transylvanian vampire?
The real life Romanian castle that reportedly inspired the classic novel Dracula is on the market for an undisclosed price.
New York law firm Herzfeld and Rubin, which is handling the sale, this week revealed it is accepting expressions of interest for Bran Castle, which has become something of a national monument in the eastern European country.
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Inside the Dracula Castle.
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“If someone comes in with a reasonable offer, we will look at who they are, what they are proposing, and will seriously entertain the idea,” Mark Meyer, of Herzfeld and Rubin, told the Daily Telegraph.
The sale comes after the current owner, Archduke Domini, reportedly offered the castle to the Romanian government for $80 million USD.
The historic castle is said to have inspired Bram Stoker’s 1897 vampire novel, although the medieval property is one of several in the region that have been tied to the Dracula legend.
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Other properties – including Poenari Castle and Hunyad Castle – have also been said to have inspired the fortress described in Stoker’s novel.
However, the Irish author himself never visited Romania. His descriptions of Dracula’s castle were based on information available to him in turn-of-the-century Britain. These descriptions closely match Bran Castle.
The character of Dracula himself is said to be loosely based on Vlad Tepes, sometimes known as Vlad Dracul. Vlad was a Walachian Prince connected to Poenari Castle, also in Transylvania, which is now in ruins.
These days Bran Castle is a museum open to the public and attracts more than 500,000 annual visitors on the Dracula trail.
