Romania gives Dracula's Castle back to Owners

BUCHAREST, Romania - The Romanian government will return the country's most popular tourist sites, the fabled Dracula Castleto its former owner after seizing more than 60 years ago.

The castle is worth an estimated $25 million and was owned by the late Queen Marie who bequeathed it to her daughter Princess Ileana in 1938. It was confiscated by communists in 1948 and fell into disrepair. It will be transferred on Friday to Dominic van Hapsburg, a New York architect who inherited the castle from Princess Ileana decades after the communists seized it.

Van Hapsburg is a descendant of the Hapsburg dynasty which ruled Romania for a period starting in the late 17th century.

The hand-over ceremony will take place Friday at noon in the 14th century castle's museum deep within the fortress in Transylvania, minister Adrian Iorgulescu said.

Restoration work began in the late 1980s and was partially completed in 1993. It is now one of Romania's top tourist destinations. Under the agreement, the owner will not be allowed to make any changes to the castle for the next three years, Iorgulescu said.

While known and marketed as "Dracula's Castle," it never belonged to Prince Vlad the Impaler, who inspired Bram Stoker's Count Dracula character. But the prince is thought to have visited the medieval fortress. The Gothic fortress, perched on a rock, has appeared in numerous Dracula movies.

The castle is the most famous of 15 citadels and fortresses in the area, which were built by peasants to keep out marauding armies of Turks and Tartars and cruel local medieval lords.

Another former royal property, the Peles Castle, built in the late 19th century in the mountain town of Sinaia, will be returned to former King Michael. He owned it before it was confiscated by the communist regime in 1948.

Romania passed legislation earlier this year to return property to its former owners and establish a "property fund" to pay damages for assets that cannot be returned. The fund includes stock in state-owned companies that are being privatized.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Aggie

Image
First of all, I would like to wish everyone a Happy Horror Day. Later on tonight, you will have a chance to win 1,000 BlogMad credits. Keep checking for that. Now on to tonight's first story. Henry Adams hired American sculpture Augustus St. Gaudens to construct a memorial for his beloved wife, Marian "Clover" Adams who committed suicide after the death of her father. After four years, the piece was finished in 1891. It was never officially named, but it was mostly known as the "Adams Memorial" and later "Grief". Stories vary as to how it received that nickname. The statue was so fascinating that a sculpture named Eduard L.A. Pausch copied it. The statue would go to be named "Black Aggie". General Felix Agnus purchased the copy in 1905 to place at his family's tomb. Then had a monument and pedestal created that would closely match the setting of the Adams Memorial in Washington. No one knows exactly why he chose this statue. A year later,...
Read more

Reader Submission - The Creeper

Image
There is a true life story, about a little boy at the time called Richard. Richard was baker/acted into the Waverly Hills Sanatorium WHGC way back in 1967. The two doctors and three nurses that were present in the ECT room on August 20th 1967 9:32 am, all signed and swore it to be true. The Creeper actually manifested inside the ECT room, and shrouded the child from electrocution. They also say the child had entities all around him while in his stay. Richard was said to be one of the most powerful Clairsentient Empathetic children, to ever walk threw the Waverly Hills Sanatorium doors, and the same goes for the St Albans Sanatorium. My father and his friends have been collecting files, along with me and my team on this child for over 50 years now. All this broke in May 20th 2015 when one of the last living WHGC nurses was found alive in California. She had some how found this child in order to give him a case files she stole over 50 years ago out of the Wood Haven Geriatrics Center...
Read more

Edna Collings Bridge

Edna Collings Bridge also known as Edna Collins Bridge was built in 1922 over Little Walnut Creek. It was the last covered bridge built in Putnam County, Indiana replacing a concrete bridge washed out in high waters. And it's believed to be haunted. The most common story is Edna Collins was a little girl who went swimming in Little Walnut Creek often as she lived nearby. Her parents would drop her off on their way to town. When they returned, they would honk the horn three times to let her know it was time to leave. One day, her parents followed their usual routine except this time Edna failed to respond. Upon searching the creek, she was found dead (allegedly by her father), having drown. Circumstances concerning her death unknown. Variations of this story has her mother following her in death. Grieving over lost of her child, her mother placed a noose around her neck and hung herself. Another piece has her father being the one who built the bridge and named it after his daugh...
Read more