In the myths and legends of the ancient Mesopotamian civilization and the ancient Greek civilization, there are devils who suck human essence. During the period of the "Black Death (Plague)", the feared infectious disease in Europe, Germany also had vampire legends. Most of the vampire stories we see today come from folklore of the Balkans and Eastern European Slavs, who are pale and gaunt, with long canine teeth coming out of their mouths, lying day and night, biting people's throats to suck fresh blood. In 1897, the Irish writer Bram Stoker wrote a very famous novel, Dracula the Vampire, in which the world's number one vampire lived in The Castle of Brown in Romania.
Although the "Dark Middle Ages" lasted for thousands of years, the European countries were not idle at all, except for fighting wars, and nobles and knights built fortresses for defense. One of them is Bran Castle, located in central Romania, about 30 kilometers from Brasov, which dates back to the wooden fortress built here by the Teutonic knights in 1212. The earliest official written record of Brown Castle was in a document signed by the Hungarian king in 1377 that approved the local Saxons to build a castle, and built a castle with stone on the basis of the original fortress to resist the Turks. The castle was completed in 1382, and in the years that followed gradually became a political center of military, customs, local administration, and justice.
Since Romania is mentioned, I would like to say a few words: in the Middle Ages there was no "Romanian" state, and today Romania was mainly composed of three small states: the Duchy of Wallachia, the Principality of Moldova and transylvania. The first small state remained under the control of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, the second principality was controlled by the Ottoman Turkish Empire and Tsarist Russia, and the third was ruled by Austria, Hungary, and Germany.
Map of three countries
Although vampires do not exist, the owner of the castle in the novel, Count Dracula, does have his own person in history. His original name was Vlad Tepes (1422-1462), a prince of the Duchy of Wallachia, and "dracula" means "demon", which is actually his nickname. He was not bloodthirsty, but devoted himself to the development of the country from 1456 onwards. At that time, the Principality of Wallachia was oppressed by the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and Dracula led his troops to fight bravely and invinciblely, but the only drawback was that he was suspicious and cruel, whether it was a prisoner of war or a corrupt official, even if he was known behind his back, he would be punished with "pile punishment".
Statue of Dracula
This was a cruel punishment in the European Middle Ages: nailing a sharpened stake to the ground, poking the living person on the seat, and using the weight of the human body to slowly sink, like a skewer of grilled meat, the stake has always come out of the mouth. The executed corpses are also displayed on wooden stakes for several days until they decay into skeletons to make an example.
Dracula had driven the Turks to the south bank of the Danube and captured two thousand Turkish soldiers, and he ordered all of them to be sentenced to stake. The sultan of the Ottoman Turkish Empire at that time was none other than the famous Muhammad II, who, yes, at the age of 21, captured Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and destroyed the Thousand-Year-Old Byzantine Empire. Muhammad II personally marched and led an army of 100,000 to fight back. On the way to the march, the Turkish army saw a large "forest" in the distance, and when they approached, they found that it was the two thousand bodies of Turks who had decayed and even become skeletons! Some are even being pecked at by crows! The Turkish army was forced through the "forest", and the horrors could be imagined. At once, the morale of the Turks was destroyed, and the troops withdrew in a hurry.
Since then, "Vampire" and "Piercing Duke" have become other names for Dracula.
Under Dracula's harsh rule, the then Principality of Wallachia did indeed become a strong and united nation, but his brutality also made enemies everywhere. In 1462, Dracula was killed in a war with the Ottoman Turks, and his subjects soon forgot the peace and contentment he brought to the people, and only remembered his cruel punishment.
Back to the construction of Brown Castle, the shrewd Saxons had been worried that the castle they had built had fallen into the hands of other countries, and finally the opportunity came in 1498: the then King of Hungary, Vladislav II, had run out of money in the war, and the Saxons saw the opportunity and issued him a loan, which was mortgaged to the 10-year use of Brown Castle. After 10 years, the king failed to pay off the debt and again borrowed a large sum of money with 25 years of use. However, the king died within a few years, and after 25 years, there was no one to pay him back, and the castle fell into the hands of Madame Brasso.
Vladislav II
Because Brown Castle held the main road, Mrs. Brasso stayed in the castle for 300 years, imposing a 3% tariff on goods entering and leaving Transylvania, which was a considerable income. It was not until 1836, when Transylvania and Wallakia redrew their borders, that Brown Castle gradually lost its importance.
Brown Castle
Although the historical Count Dracula never lived in the castle, this does not affect the writer's description: "It stands on a steep cliff like an eagle towering on a huge rock: tall, old, once perhaps brilliant, but now desolate." Under the dim moonlight, it was even more miserable, the castle was silent, and the distant sound of the surging waves was faintly heard, occasionally mixed with the sorrow of one or two beasts, and I felt as if I was at the end of the world, where time and space seemed to have stopped working. ”
Dracula the Vampire by Bram Stoker
Under the writer's pen, the Transylvania region became the birthplace of vampires, but in fact it has the purest medieval atmosphere. Located in the heart of Europe, west of the Eastern Carpathian Mountains, it became part of Romania after World War I with the Treaty of Trianon signed in 1920. Although surrounded by the flourishing European civilization, it refuses to be immersed in all modern science and technology, and the wilderness and mountains are full of natural customs, and the beautiful lakes and mountains are like the peach blossoms we yearn for. If you encounter a quaint and grand ceremony, the locals will dress up in costumes, which is very lively. The locals I meet when I travel to Romania invariably tell me: You must go to Transylvania, where the European medieval style has been preserved.
Transylvania region
When I drove to the small town of Brown, where Brown Castle is located, I had in mind the dark and deep castle under the moonlight. In fact, the real-life Brown Castle is the most famous tourist destination in Romania, although it is not crowded, it is also bustling. The road to the castle's ticket office is lined with stalls selling various vampires, and teams of tour groups are lined up to enter. As I walked, I thought: Even if there are vampires, they have long been scared away by tourists!
From the foot of the mountain, you can climb up the stairs and reach the entrance of the castle for more than 100 meters. In the Middle Ages, the castle had no doors at all, and only a rope ladder was thrown from the south side for people to enter.
Aerial photographs on the official website of Castle Brown show its construction in its entirety: it was built over hundreds of years, creating an asymmetrical and irregular appearance. The round tower in the conical shape of the gunpowder depot in the southwest corner is the earliest built; the rectangular main tower on the north side is the highest; the defensive easter tower was added on the east side in the 16th century, and the outer wall is decorated with stone blocks, also known as the "stone tower"; the square gate tower, built in the 17th century on the southeast side, is now the main entrance to the castle; the courtyard enclosed by the tower, called " the interior courtyard".
Castle overlook
During Dracula's reign, pedestrians had to walk the main road under the castle in order to collect taxes. Tax evaders are severely punished if caught by soldiers, and this plot becomes the vampire Dracula who goes out day and night, attracting vampire fans from all over the world to make pilgrimages. In fact, the Relationship between Count Dracula and Brown Castle is not great, but queen Marie, known as the "Balkan mother-in-law", is the real hostess of the castle.
Queen Mary
Mary was born into nobility, known as "the most beautiful and wealthy princess in Europe", and was truly the first "white rich beauty" in Europe. Her father, Prince Alfred, was the second son of Queen Victoria of England, and her mother was a princess of Tsar Alexander II. Born with a diamond spoon, she almost married King George V. European royal marriage pays more attention to the "words of the parents' fate", and the fathers of both sides agree that the mother does not agree to the result of the yellow. At the age of 17, Mary had grown into a determined and visionary grand girl, married crown prince of Romania, Ferdinand I. But Ferdinand was cowardly, and Mary assisted her husband in governing the country. It was her decision that Romania was on the side of the Allies during World War I. After world war I, the Paris Peace Conference, it was also Queen Mary herself who went out of the mountains to return more than 60% of Romanian territory.
To thank his wife, in 1920 Ferdinand I bought Brown Castle as a birthday present to Mary. At that time, the castle had been abandoned for a long time, dilapidated and depressed. Mary hired the Czech architect Karel Liman to renovate the castle on a large scale and purchase furniture and decorations from Western European countries, making it a summer residence for the royal family. Before the queen's death, the castle was given to her daughter Princess Ileana, and in 1948 the castle was nationalized in Romania, the princess was forced to go into exile with her six children, and the family moved to Switzerland, Argentina, and settled in Massachusetts in 1950. In September 2005, Romania returned the castle to Princess Iliana's son, Grand Duke Dominique Habsburg, who had become a U.S. citizen. Two years later, the castle was open to the public. When it was returned, the three children of the princess took a group photo at the door, and the old gentleman on the right was the Grand Duke of Dominica. The expressions of all three of them looked strange, like a smile forced out. But isn't it, from childhood to follow their mothers and be forced to leave their homeland, leaving their home with warm memories of their childhood, which has been broken by waves of tourists, and no one will be happy?
I believe that many people, like me, came with the idea of pilgrimage or hunting "vampires". If you are in such a mood, you may be slightly disappointed. Because the interior of the castle doesn't have much to say about vampires or Count Dracula, it's just a museum that displays Queen Mary's living objects and collection of art.
The entrance to the interior of the castle is only a one-way tour route, and as the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, the "old grandmother of Europe", Queen Mary naturally has extraordinary taste. The second floor is where Queen Mary lived on her daily basis, first and foremost in her bedroom, with medieval elegance and sophistication: white walls with dark wood furniture, outlines worn away by time; intricately embroidered tapestries with thick animal furs.
Walking in the castle, you can even imagine: one summer morning a hundred years ago, Queen Mary pushed open the window and breathed in the fresh mountain air, overlooking the mountains and lush forests. The green-roofed house on the right is a small cottage that Princess Eliaana returned to Romania after World War II to build.
Through the narrow entrance in the corner of the castle, the watch house is entered first, through which you go upstairs to visit the rooms, and then descend from the other side back to the inner courtyard. At the end of the wooden floor corridor is the living room of the successive castle owners, which Queen Mary called the "Yellow House". Today there is a post-Renaissance table and a few 19th-century chairs.
The "Salon Room", used to receive guests, is the side room next to it is queen Mary's bedroom. The furnishings are simple and there are no luxurious decorations, but the bedding and tablecloths are typical of the local Romanian ethnic specialties. This room was used by Princess Iliana between 1938 and 1947.
The room next to it, called the room of the castellans, was once used as a chapel where Queen Mary liked to have breakfast or read books and draw when she lived in the castle. The colored portrait on the front wall is of a 16th-century nobleman from Brasov, Lucas Hirscher, who was also the owner of the castle. The bronze boy statue on the wall on the right is princess Eliaana's first son, Stefan.
Next door to this room is queen Mary's large drawing room, and no one could have imagined that behind this wall, there is a stone staircase hidden for four hundred years!
This narrow staircase leads to the library and music room on the fourth floor, which was the center of royal leisure and entertainment at that time.
Up to the fourth floor is a spacious cloister (the loggia), facing the inner courtyard, facing the conical round tower on the west side. Built during queen Mary's renovation, it is often used as a venue for summer dinners, where royals can enjoy the transylvanian landscape while having dinner.
Further up to the upper terrace on the fifth floor, the staircase on the other side connects prince nicolae's bedroom. The son of Ferdinand and Mary, he was born in 1903 at The Château de Peles. The Prince's apartment is very well furnished, with Italian Renaissance dining tables and neo-Baroque cabinets, crystal cups, and many antique collections, and on one side of the apartment is a games room.
This room is called the "biedermeier drawing room" but has always been used as a bedroom. Queen Mary and the sons of Princess Eliaana both lived here.
King Ferdinand's bedroom is on four floors and is large and bright. Romanian landscape paintings hang on the walls and are furnished with a full set of Baroque furniture. Under the prayer chairs are Chinese carpets, and on the table are crowns and scepters of pure gold. Ferdinand I did not like the castle very much, but came here a few times in his life, and died in 1927 before the renovation of the castle was completed, most likely never living here. In 1931, Princess Eliaana and Grand Duke Anton of Austria moved to Brown Castle after their wedding at Peles Castle, a nearby city, and the room became the newlyweds' bedroom.
The castle's corner towers are also equipped with movable floors for easy viewing and defense. The four corner towers are connected by corridors, and firing holes have been dug into the outer walls to ensure that there are no dead ends.
The two rooms in the southwest corner of the third floor are now the weapons rooms, including two complete sets of armor and spear shields engraved with the coats of arms of transylvania and Wallachian cities, reminiscent of the bloody storms that the castle has experienced over the past few hundred years.
The medieval instruments of torture inside the castle are reminiscent of Dracula's tyranny
There are still many exhibitions of vampire movies and novels in the castle, and the dim light and gloomy forest still make visitors feel as if there will really be vampires.
More than 500,000 visitors come here every year to seek out vampires, wander the eerie corridors and experience scenes from novels and movies. To add to the atmosphere of terror, the castle administration has a sign at the gate tree: No entry into the castle at night.
Note: All of the photos in this article are from the official brown castle website
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【Author:Desert Rose】
Global travel expert, travel experience engineer, freelance writer, guest host. He has traveled to nearly 50 countries and more than 200 cities on five continents.