Draculas Castle Is for Sale | Smart News | Smithsonian

Bran Castle, a 12th century fortress perched atop a hill in central Romania, is for sale. Thecastle is popular tourist destinationthanks to its most famous (but fictional)resident, Count Dracula. The current owners, however, are getting older, the Telegraph reports, and hope to hand over the reins to aDracula- and history-loving visionary who can breathe new life into the place.

The castle is full of historical storiesand not just the fictional kind. Indeed, as Smithsonianhas written, Bram Stoker, who set his novel Dracula there, never even bothered to visit:

English libraries provided all the maps and reference books he needed. His ghoulish imagination did the rest. Count Dracula, he of the hard-looking mouth, with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory, inhabited a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky.

In real life, the castle has been home toSaxons,Hungarians andTeutonic knights, the Telegraph reports, and, perhaps, to the infamous Vlad the Impaler (Dracula's inspiration), who might have been brieflyheld prisoner there in the 15th century. Eventually, Bran Castle fell into the hands of Romania's royal familyand was seized bythe governmentin 1958. When theCeausescu regime fell, the buiding once again came into possession of the remaining royal heirs, who have been tending to it ever since.

Now well into their 70s, however, the owners are looking for a buyer who will continue their vision of maintaining and growing"the largest and most significant attraction in Romania," they told the Telegraph. Herzfeld and Rubin, the New York City-based law firm that's handling the sale, hasn't publicly revealed the asking price,butrumor has it that the Romanian government had the first right of refusal, at a price tag of $80 million.

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Draculas Castle Is for Sale | Smart News | Smithsonian

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero