Photos

I found The Cheese man right out side the Bran Castle,beeing trully bored selling his cheese all day long to the tourist.

May be He is a distant cousin of Vlad,


1212 the Teutonic Knights built the wooden castle of Dietrichstein as a fortified position in the Burzenland at the entrance to a mountain valley through which traders had traveled for more than a millennium, although it was destroyed in 1242 by the Mongols. The first documented mentioning of Bran Castle is the act issued by Louis I of Hungary on November 19, 1377, giving the Saxons of Kronstadt (Braşov) the privilege to build the stone citadel; the settlement of Bran began to develop nearby. The castle was first used in 1378 in defense against the Ottoman Empire, and later became a customs post on the mountain pass between Transylvania and Wallachia. The castle briefly belonged to Mircea the Elder of Wallachia. While Vlad Ţepeş did not actually live in the Bran Castle, it is believed he spent two days locked in the dungeon while the Ottomans controlled Transylvania.[citation needed]

From 1920, the castle became a royal residence within the Kingdom of Romania. It was the principal home of Queen Marie, and is decorated largely with artifacts from her time, including traditional furniture and tapestries that she collected to highlight Romanian crafts and skills.- It was inherited by her daughter, Princess Ileana, and was later seized by the communist regime after the expulsion of the royal family in 1948.

In 2005, the Romanian government passed a special law allowing restitution claims on properties such as Bran, which was seized by the Communist government of Romania in 1948. In 2006, the Romanian government awarded ownership to Archduke Dominic of Austria, Prince of Tuscany, known as Dominic von Habsburg, an architect in New York State and the son and heir of Princess Ileana.