Poenari - The REAL Dracula's Castle

The following is an excerpt from the book Single White Female Backpacker from the Teresa the Traveler Series. 
After almost a three hour drive from Brasov, we arrived at Poenari Castle just as thesun was starting to set.  When we realized we had to climb 1500 steps to get to the castle, we quickly understood why people preferred to think of Bran Castle as Dracula’s Castle. This Vlad guy must have been in pretty good shape to live way up in this mountain fortress.
    While climbing the stairs, Claudiu told us the story of Vlad Tepes also known as Vlad III the Impaler and how he used this castle in the 15th century as one of his main fortresses. He chose it due to its strategic location high on the mountain making it difficult to overtake.  
     Vlad Tepes was the son of Vlad the Dragon aka Vlad II Dracul and was called Draculea which meant son of Dracul.  Dracul in Romanian means the devil but in Vlad’s day it meant dragon. His father was a member of the Order of the Dragons, an organization created by Emperor Sigismund. He later became known by the name Tepes which means impaler as this was his preferred method of executing his political opponents. It is said that he killed between 20,000 and 40,000 European civilians and up to 100,000 invading Turkish Muslims mostly by means of impaling them on a sharp pole.
    When Vlad was in power he arrested all the nobles, impaling the older ones and forcing the younger ones and their families to march to the ruined Poienari Castle and rebuild it for his stronghold and refuge.  The nobles were forced to labor until their clothes fell off then they continued to work naked; very few of them survived the building of the castle.
    There is no firm evidence that the character of Dracula was actually based on Vlad the Impaler other than that Bram Stoker came across the name Dracula while reading a book on Romanian history.  It is more likely that the villain in the 1897 novel Dracula was actually based on the whacked out Countess of Hungary, Elizabeth Bathory who killed hundreds of young women in order to drink and bath in their blood believing this would preserve her youth.
    The castle was in pretty rough shape. It had been abandoned in the first half of the 16th century and left to deteriorate.  In 1888 a landslide relocated part of the castle to the river below but it has since received some repairs as the Romanians attempt to preserve what is left of this historical building.  We were there in the off season and, as luck had it, we were the only people there giving us the feeling that we were the first to discover the castle of Dracula.  I could see how Dracula would feel safe in this castle, most of his enemies were probably too lazy to climb the steps and the ones that did would be too tired to fight by the time they reached the top.
    We spend some time admiring the breath taking view and exploring the little nooks and crannies of the abandoned fortress before making our way down the steps. It was getting dark and we had a long drive back.
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Where I Stayed...
Hotel Adabelle
Brasnov, Romania
Str. Pietii nr. 5 cod 50007
Vis a vis de Teatrul Dramatic
Tel: (40) 268 411 080
Mobil: (40) 755 065 790
Website: www.adabelle.ro
Email: [email protected]
Quiet clean basic rooms right in the center of the old downtown core