Bran Castle

On the 3rd of January I completed a day trip out of Bucharest to visit Bran Castle.

During this week, I was still on break from work and my brother was visiting from Australia. We wanted to take the opportunity to visit this famous castle, in the Transylvanian part of Romania, that is known locally as Dracula's Castle. The actual historical figure of Dracula (Vlad Tepes also known as Vlad the Impaler) was a prince of Walachia and probably never visited this castle, although he might have owned it for a brief time. The description of the castle in the novel by Bram Stoker, while fictitious, best fits Bran Castle. Needless to say the tourism department went with it. Even without the Dracula mythos, it is an awesome castle to visit.

The walkway to the castle and the entrance.

I bought our tickets online, so we were able to just scan the QR code at the entrance doorway. With their system, a ticket bought online is valid through to the end of the calendar year, there is no need to book a day for the visit. This was a problem for me as I couldn't book the tickets until the 1st of January, since if I bought the tickets in December they would have expired before we actually would make it to the castle.

Beyond their weird online ticket system, the actual tour was well laid out. It was a self guided tour that wound its way throughout the castle, going from one room to the next and eventually finishing in the courtyard.

One of the first things I noticed was just how thick the castle walls were, at least a meter thick, and so the windows ledges are really deep.

Most of the rooms had some sort of display in them and many of them were laid out as they would have been when the castle was last used as a private residence. This was back before World War II when the castle was in the care of the Romanian royal family. Marie the queen really liked the castle and ordered extensive repair works to be done. If it wasn't for these repairs and renovations, this 13th century castle would today be a ruin.

During the communist regime the castle was owned by the state but afterwards it was eventually returned to the ownership of a Romanian royalty descendant.

This room would have been a common lounge area. When we visited, it was still decorated for Christmas.

If I lived in this castle, this would be my favourite spot. A little reading nook right next to the fire. Although, I might add some extra pillows for more comfort.

The self guided tour wound its way through the castle and at multiple points we would get a view of the inner courtyard. These two pictures were taken from the upper most floor we had access to. From here we could see down into the courtyard and the full expanse of the roof.

Here is a view looking out from Bran Castle into the valley. The castle was made in a gap between the mountains. This area was once a border region between empires, castles like Bran would have been used for the defense of these empires. The castle also would have been used as a point to tax merchants traveling through the region. In this picture you can see an ancient wall going across part of the valley and I wondered if this would have once been part of the defense strategy.

I loved how the stairs and passageways wound their way throughout the castle. The castle is ancient, being about 700 years old, and has been re-modeled and expanded on multiple times. This leads to really interesting passageways as architects need to plan and re-plan rooms and corridors throughout the centuries to meet the changing needs of the castle's occupants.

This was a view out of one of the many windows in the castle. The castle was built on a prominent hill so almost every window has a nice view into the valley below.

The inner courtyard of the castle was really awesome but also impossible to fully photograph. Even a super wide angle lens might not be adequate and visiting in person is the best solution. I still tried with my camera, the above three pictures are all taken from the same balcony. At this level, there was a covered walkway going all the way around the courtyard and we were able to explore most of it. All along this balcony we had a different view of the courtyard and the castle towers.

This view here was taken from further down the balcony, now looking across to the tallest tower in the castle. I really loved the architecture of the castle, because it is so old and has been renovated many times the building is a mess of towers, walls, and windows, and yet it looks awesome. It has almost a natural look to it as the castle wasn't planned in one go but grew over the centuries.

I really like this picture as it further shows of the beautiful mess of the castle. This was taken on the opposite side of the courtyard to where I was before.

The image on the left (first) was taken from the same spot as the previous picture, but this time looking down into the courtyard. The right image (second) was taken from the courtyard floor, looking up to the same balconies as the previous image.

Walking through the castle was a really wonderful experience and I would highly recommend it. The tour finished in the courtyard area and at this point there was an optional extension to take an elevator down to the bottom of the hill. This elevator was built inside an old well to provide easy access to the park outside the castle. Now they have refit it as an exhibit called the time tunnel, with a gift shop at the end.

After exiting the castle, we walked around the grounds a little getting different views of the castle, up on the hill. From the pictures, you can see how the castle would have dominated the region and how a building like this would be very defensible.

We found a hiking trail nearby and at the trail head we had a good view of the castle.

This was our last view of Bran castle as we hiked our way up a mountain. In the background is the village of Bran.

We didn't hike far on the trail but even so the trail quickly went up a small mountain where we had some amazing views. We were able to complete a seven kilometer loop and a good portion of it was along the top of a ridge line. The above picture shows the trail with the Bucegi mountains far of in the background.

The views we had were absolutely amazing. While we may not have been as high as the mountains, in some ways this was better as the mountains were the background to the beautiful landscape all around us. These pictures were my favourites. The villages seem to nestle in the bottom of valleys, almost like puddles of water settling at the local minimum. The hills nearby are a beautiful patchwork of forests and pastures, dusted with snow, and the mountains rise high in the background to complete the scene.

This was an interesting old hut next to the pathway at about the halfway point of our walk. From here we would turn back and return by a different path.

Returning down the mountain, we went on this path that zigzaged down the slope always crossing this same clearing. From the clearing we had a good view of the village below. The wide shot shows the slope we walked down while the zoomed shot highlights the village view.

After the hike we returned to Brasov for a couple hours before catching the train back to Bucharest. This had been an amazing day and it was my first time visiting a castle in Europe. Bran Castle was wonderful, it was very picturesque and beautiful, most definitely worthy to inspire a great setting for a fantasy story.

Thanks for reading – Edward

Written 4th of February 2024

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