Bran, Romania
The Romanian government has given Dracula’s castle back to the heirs of the Romanian royal family, part of a broad restitution of private property seized by the Communists. Bran Castle was the seat of Vlad the Impaler, the 15th-century nobleman whose bloody exploits inspired novelist Bram Stoker’s vampire character. The castle was given to Queen Marie in 1920, and her grandson Dominic von Habsburg lived there until he was 10, when the Communists took it over and his family fled to the U.S. Habsburg, now 68, said he does not want his childhood home to remain associated with the fictional vampire. That’s bad news for the tourist trade. Since the 1989 fall of communism, the main industry in the village of Bran has been selling Dracula-related kitsch.
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