Poenari Castle, Romania

Poenari Castle (Romanian pronunciation: [po.eˈnarʲ]), also known as Poenari Citadel (Cetatea Poenari in Romanian), is a ruined castle in Romania, notable for its connection to Vlad the Impaler. Access to the citadel is made by climbing the 1,480 concrete stairs.

Poenari Castle was erected around the beginning of the 13th century by Wallachians.Around the 14th century, Poenari was the main citadel of the Basarab rulers. In the next few decades, the name and the residents changed a few times but eventually the castle was abandoned and left in ruins.

However, in the 15th century, realizing the potential for a castle perched high on a steep precipice of rock, Vlad III the Impaler repaired and consolidated the structure, making it one of his main fortresses. Although the castle was used for many years after Vlad's death in 1476, it eventually was abandoned again in the first half of the 16th century and was in ruins by the 17th century. The size and location of the castle made it difficult to conquer. In 1888, a landslide caused by an earthquake brought down parts of the castle which crashed into the river far below. It was slightly repaired and the walls and its towers still stand today.

During the Communist era in Romania, foreign visitors sometimes spent the night inside the ruined structure. Since 2009, the site has been administered by the Argeș County Museum. Claims that the Poenari Castle would be the "real" Castle Dracula as featured in Bram Stoker's famous Dracula novel have no basis in Stoker's book. Stoker never heard of the Poenari Castle. It is ca. 200 km away from the novel's place of action in the north-east corner of Transylvania. As discovered by the Dutch author Hans Corneel de Roos, Stoker's own handwritten research notes confirm that the novelist had a specific location in that region for the Vampire's stronghold in mind while writing his novel: an empty mountain top 2,033 m high, located in the Transylvanian Carpathian Mountains, near the former border with Moldavia. Source: Wikipedia

Picture Source: Collected from Internet