Visiting Dracula’s Castle

On my way to Poenari Castle, I passed through the town of Curtea de Argeș. I pretty much just drove through, but I could tell it was a charming town and stopped long enough to take these photos. Curtea de Argeș is one of the oldest towns in Romania and was once a capital of Wallachia. The town is also known for its historic churches and monasteries, making it a destination worth properly exploring on another trip.

The farther I traveled from Romania’s cities, the more traditional rural life became. Modern technology was certainly present, but I still saw horses and carriages being used for transportation and farmers doing work by hand. Chickens wandered outside farm fences, while horses hauled people, hay, lumber, and other goods along the roads. Scenes like these made parts of rural Romania feel much farther removed from modern European cities than the actual distance would suggest.

Above, a man leads several large bulls down the road while a horse-drawn carriage carries people through another village. I saw scenes like this dozens of times while driving through the countryside. It was one of my favorite parts of traveling through Romania because simply getting from one destination to another gave me a look at rural life that I never would have seen by staying in the major cities.

As I traveled deeper into the mountains, small churches and enormous traditional haystacks became common sights along the road. The scenery also became increasingly dramatic as the road climbed into the Carpathian Mountains.

Fog drifting through the forested mountains finally gave Romania some of the gloomy Transylvanian atmosphere I had imagined before arriving. Somewhere high above these valleys was the destination I had come looking for: Poenari Castle, the fortress most closely associated with the real Vlad the Impaler.

Reaching Poenari Castle required climbing nearly 1,500 steps through the forest. The climb took me about half an hour and made it obvious why this location had such strategic value. The fortress sits high above the surrounding valleys on a steep mountain ridge, making any attack against it extremely difficult. Even before reaching the ruins, the climb itself gave me a much better appreciation for why someone like Vlad would have wanted a fortress here.

Fortunately, there were historical signs along the climb explaining the fortress and its connection to Vlad III, better known as Vlad the Impaler. Vlad ruled Wallachia during the 15th century and became notorious for his brutal treatment of enemies and political opponents. His nickname came from his infamous use of impalement, a particularly gruesome form of execution intended not only to kill but also to terrify anyone who witnessed its aftermath.

Vlad’s reputation depends heavily on where the story is being told. Accounts from his enemies portrayed him as an exceptionally cruel ruler responsible for enormous numbers of deaths, while later Romanian traditions often emphasized his resistance to the expanding Ottoman Empire and his attempts to impose order within Wallachia. Separating fact from propaganda can be difficult more than five centuries later, but there is little doubt that Vlad deliberately used extreme violence and fear as political and military weapons.

That complicated legacy is also what makes his connection to Dracula so interesting. Bram Stoker borrowed the name Dracula for his fictional vampire centuries later, although the character and Vlad’s actual life have relatively little in common. Modern tourism has blended the two together so thoroughly that the historical ruler and fictional vampire are now almost impossible to separate in popular culture.

For anyone feeling superstitious on the way to Dracula’s fortress, a dog staring back with a glowing red eye probably isn’t what you want to encounter. Fortunately, the effect was just from my camera and the dog was actually friendly. On the right was one of the displays along the route depicting the violent punishments associated with the medieval period. Given Vlad’s reputation, it certainly helped set the mood before reaching the fortress.

Eventually I reached my destination: what I had come to think of as Dracula’s real castle. I was the only visitor there except for the man collecting admission at the entrance. Unlike Bran Castle, don’t expect an enormous, beautifully preserved medieval castle filled with furnished rooms. Poenari is a ruin, and much of the original fortress disappeared centuries ago.

That was actually part of what made the experience so memorable. Bran Castle is dramatically preserved, easy to reach, and packed with tourists. Poenari required a long drive into the mountains followed by nearly 1,500 steps, and when I finally arrived I practically had the ruins to myself. It felt far more isolated and much closer to the kind of place I imagined when thinking about the historical Vlad the Impaler.

Poenari wasn’t originally built by Vlad. A fortress existed here before his reign, but Vlad recognized the strategic importance of the location and had it strengthened during the 15th century. The fortress continued to be used after his death before eventually being abandoned. Landslides and centuries of exposure took their toll, leaving the broken walls and towers that remain today.

The views alone made the climb worthwhile. From the fortress you can look down across the valley and surrounding Carpathian Mountains. Standing there also makes the defensive value of Poenari obvious. Anyone attempting to attack the fortress would first have needed to approach through mountainous terrain and then somehow fight their way up the steep slopes to reach the walls.

These were some of my final photos from inside the fortress. I wasn’t sure what the area on the left had originally been used for or even how it would have been entered when the castle was intact. Looking down from above, it reminded me of a cellar or storage area. On the right are the remains of another section of the fortress that may once have formed part of a tower.

Poenari doesn’t have the visual impact of Bran Castle, but for me it was the more interesting of the two. Bran gave me the Dracula of books, movies, souvenirs, and modern tourism. Poenari gave me a lonely ruined fortress high in the mountains that had an actual connection to Vlad the Impaler. After climbing through the forest and then exploring the ruins almost completely alone, this felt much closer to the Dracula experience I had traveled through Romania hoping to find.