Where is Dracula’s castle?

Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula placed its vampire in a castle in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania. Bran Castle, built in the late 1300s on a rocky hill on the old border between Transylvania and Wallachia, closely matches the kind of fortress Stoker described, although he never visited Romania. The real Vlad III, known as Vlad the Impaler and nicknamed Dracula, ruled Wallachia in the 1400s and may have passed through or been briefly held near Bran. His true stronghold was Poenari Castle, a ruin reached by about 1,480 steps. Bran Castle now draws over a million visitors a year, making it one of Romania’s top attractions.