Always had a burning desire to live in a true Transylvanian castle, and have an extra $78 million burning a hole in your pocket? Then you’re in luck: Bran Castle, the nearly 800-year-old former residence of Transylvanian bluebloods, has just been put up for sale by a descendant of the deposed Romanian royal family.
According to local legend, Prince Vlad Tepes (otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler, after his favored form of dispatching with his enemies) spent time at the castle during his bloody reign in the 1400s. Though he didn’t actually drink blood from his thousands of victims, the Transylvanian terror did spill plenty of it, and became the inspiration for the title character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Bran Castle itself inspired the setting for parts of Stoker’s 1897 novel, earning the medieval manor the nickname “Dracula’s Castle.”
Built in 1212 and later used as a fortress to hold off invading Turks, the Gothic dwelling is set atop a cliff in the Carpathian Mountains, near the Transylvanian city of Brasov. Features include 11-foot-thick walls, lofty towers, secret underground passages, and subterranean dungeons.
A photographic tour of the property:
What do you think? Is it love at first … bite?
Friday, July 6, 2007
That’s Random: “Dracula’s Castle” for Sale
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3 comments:
i love it. dream home.
tres goth...
Even if I could look at the $78 million house valuation without my bank account screaming in terror, I don't think I'd bite. (Sorry, pun not intended) Call me sissy but I just don't think I'd be comfortable in a castle. Unless we're talking Disney, a castle's not a castle unless there's something supernatural going on. Or at least feels like something supernatural's going on.
Anyway, I think they're still running it as a museum and it's best that way. I always hate it when pieces of history are passed into the private ownership of a collector and forever hidden from view.
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