Dracula – Myth and reality

Castle Bran – Built by the inhabitants of Brasov as a result of the Privilege granted to them on November the 19 1377, the fortress was ment to survey and defend the Bran mountain passcrossed, during the Middle Age, by the most important commercial road joining Brasov to Wallachia. Ever since its beginnings, the fortress was endowed with an archer and ballister garrison. In order to provide the necessary incomes for its support, the castle was allotted an estate covering nine villages from the region called: Baciu, Turches, Cernatu, Satulung, Zizin, Purcareni, Târlungeni, Crizbav and Apata.

The fortress and the Bran estate were ruled by castle lords who held both the military functions as garrison commanders and the ones regarding administration and jurisdiction. They also collected the mediaeval taxes from the castle subjects. Between 1395 and 1427 the Bran fortress was possessed by Mircea the Old and his successors.

Thus having the control of the Bran pass, the Wallachian volvodes established close commercial and cultural relation ships with Brasov and Transylvania. In 1413 Mircea the Old licensed to the inhabitans of Brasov the well known commercial Privilege by which he reinforced” the custom establishments they had inherited from their ancestors throughout the Wallachian towns and on the road from Brasov to Braila, along the Bran pass.”Close by the fortress there was, up to the middle the 19 century, a custom house that used to take a 3% tax for all the commodities passing along the Bran road.

Ince 1498, the fortress and the Bran estate were mortgaged to the town of Brasov, which possessed them until 1651. The same year, as result of the Transylvanian Diet’s approval, the inhabitans of Brasov became owners of these territories “for ever and irrevocably”. After the events of 1848-1849, when serfdom-and thus the Bran feudal estate was abolished, the castle, still kept as a property of Brasov, became the seal of a forest enclosure in charge of the castle lord. On December the 1-st 1920, the castle was bestowed to the royal family and become a summer residence until December the 30 1947, when the abolishion of the monarchy made it belong to the estate patrimony.In 1956 the Bran fortress-castle was laid out in order to be a museum of history and feudal art and was opened up to the visitors.