Bran Castle: On the Footsteps of Queen Maria and Princess Ileana

Looking for a day trip from Bucharest to Bran Castle? Check www.uncover-romania-tours.com

Taking a day tour from Bucharest to Bran Castle is maybe the most popular option if it’s your first time in Romania’s capital. But you should know a few things before you book a trip to see this famous site.

First, Bran Castle is Romania’s most visited landmark. This can only mean crowds, mass tourism, and long queues. Go as early in the day as possible, and buy your ticket online to skip the line. Second, the monument has nothing to do with the legend of Dracula. The only connections are the China-imported souvenirs sold in the bazaar outside the castle. If visiting Dracula’s crib was the main reason for planning this visit, you might want to rethink your plans.

This is not to say you shouldn’t take a day and travel from Bucharest to Bran Castle. Despite the chaos outside the entrance and the big groups of visitors, this landmark is more than worth your time. You’ll discover the stories of two fabulous women, Queen Maria and Princess Ileana, who made it their beloved home.

Queen Maria: ‘Many years ago, in a trip over the border, I saw it standing in stark loneliness on that cliff and wondered how it would feel to govern such a fortress and to transform it into a home. How wonderful it would be to revive a small medieval castle, a true fairy tale’. 

Queen Maria turned the fortress into a home

Queen Maria of Romania, born Princess of Edinburgh in 1875, received Bran Castle from the local council of Brasov as a gift after WW1. It was the beginning of the most glamorous age of this Transylvanian medieval fortress, mentioned for the first time in the 14th century.

Passionate about architecture, interior design, gardening, and art, Queen Maria transformed the fortress into one of her favorite residences, along with her seashore Balchik Castle.

The queen’s bedroom

It was a laborious process that lasted over 10 years, coordinated for the most part by Karel Liman, the chief architect of the Royal House. The architect spent the last years of his life adapting the castle to modern life needs while keeping its authenticity untouched.

Queen Maria: ‘With the assistance of an old and reliable architect, as enthusiastic as myself, I began bringing life to the cold walls, revitalizing the old fortress that had never truly lived. I awakened it from its long slumber, transforming it from a blind object to a home that looks out at the world through its many eyes.’ 

The castle kept its narrow corridors and small rooms with uneven walls. Electricity, telephone lines, water, and modern facilities were installed for the first time in the old fortress. The nearby villages, otherwise remote and traditional, also received electricity from the new power plant. A small chapel painted by Arthur Verona found its place inside the castle, and a greenhouse supplied the vast gardens where swans rested on a small lake.

Bran Castle staircase

Opened for public visits every Sunday, Bran Castle impressed the queen’s guests. One considered it the most unreal and fantastic fairy castle which the wit of man could devise. It looked like a page of Hans Andersen, a beautiful tale come true’.

Referring to it as ‘Brana the beloved’, Queen Maria left the castle to her favorite daughter, Princess Ileana. It was ‘our cherished place of seclusion. I found my peace in creating as much beauty as possible, and my child filled this beauty with life’.

The cliff where the queen’s heart was moved to

As a sad irony of history, the queen’s heart, buried in the church from Balchik Castle, was safely brought to Bran in 1940, hours before Bulgaria occupied the southern coast of the Black Sea. Princess Ileana moved the box with her heart in a carved niche inside a solid cliff, close to the hospital she built and named ‘The Queen’s Heart’.

Bran Castle could only be owned by someone who understood its heart

Born in 1908, Princess Ileana loved Bran as much as her mother. Constrained by her brother, King Carol the II, to leave Romania shortly after her wedding, she only returned after his abdication. At first, Princess Ileana divided her time between Romania and Austria, eventually moving with her new family to Bran. From here, she witnessed the major political changes that transformed Romania into a communist country.

Princess Ileana

Photo source: www.bran-castle.com

Working as a nurse for the Red Cross Brasov, Princess Ileana continued her mother’s efforts from WW1. With the help of one of Romania’s richest industrialists, she built a war hospital next to the castle. It functioned under her daily administration until the communists forced her into exile in January 1948. Besides her royal descent, her efforts to help the political prisoners made her an unpopular figure for the new regime. They threatened her and followed her actions step by step, even at the hospital.

Treated like an enemy of the state, Princess Ileana lost Bran Castle. The nationalization process began and, like everyone else, Ileana had no right over her private property anymore. The confiscated castle became a museum a decade later. However, its original furniture and decorations were transferred, exhibited in other places, or simply taken away.

Bran Castle

Ileana was the only one of Queen Maria’s children that lived to see the end of the communist regime. She visited Bran Castle in 1991, shortly before her death.

Follow the history, not the vampires

The home of two amazing women, Bran Castle is a great destination if you scratch the vampire fake surface and look for the real facts and stories that offer much more emotion than any Hollywood-created myth.

Queen Maria: ‘Have I been able to describe some of the charm of Brana the Beloved? I fear not. The child who loves it best said: You will never be able to make anybody who has not seen it understand what it is really like!’ 

Read also Bran Castle: The Real Story of a World Famous Attraction