Bran Castle (Pixabay)
(THE BALKAN) – Today a museum of medieval history, the picturesque Bran Castle is one of Romania’s most frequented tourist attractions. Because it fits so well the expectations of admirers of Bram Stoker’s famous novel, visitors from around the world are easily deceived into believing that it is Dracula’s castle. While it has a rich history, the truth is that Bran Castle’s ties to the famed prince known as Vlad the Impaler, the historical Dracula, are minimal.
Located along one of the principal routes connecting Transylvania to Wallachia, the castle started out as a mere wooden fortress of the Teutonic Knights, called Dietrichstein, named for one of their leaders. The Knights constructed the fortress around 1212 after King Andrew II of Hungary (1205-1235) had called them into the area to help defend the frontiers of his kingdom. It was destroyed three decades later during the Mongol invasion in 1242.
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More than a century passed until, in 1377, again motivated by the need to defend the kingdom against attacks from the south and east, King Louis the Great of Hungary (1342-1382) issued a decree to the burghers of Brașov to begin construction of a powerful stone fortress at Bran, on the site of the wooden fort that the Teutonic Knights had built in the thirteenth century. To defend the fortress, also called Terciu by the Hungarians and the Saxons, Louis brought in English archers, the most renowned bowmen in Europe at that time.
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