Dracula’s Castle FOR SALE
"Dracula's
Castle" is for sale, but it comes with a catch: Dracula himself, or at
least the historical basis for the character, never actually lived there.
Also,
it needs some bathrooms.
“If
someone comes in with a reasonable offer, we will look at who they are, what
they are proposing, and will seriously entertain the idea," Mark Meyer told
the Daily Telegraph. His firm, Herzfeld & Rubin, would handle any potential
sale for Bran Castle, as the building's really known.
Construction
on Bran began in 1377 and was completed in 1388, according to a timeline on the
castle's website. (Yes, Dracula's Castle has a website.) Its nickname comes
from the fact that it closely matches the description of the castle in Bram
Stoker's "Dracula." Stoker himself never visited, but is believed to
have read about it and based the castle in his novel on what he read.
The character itself, or at least its name, is based loosely on Vlad III Dracula, a.k.a. Vlad Tepes or "Vlad the Impaler." And while Vlad never lived at Bran either, documents suggest he was once captured and imprisoned inside for two months.
If
you want to own the castle, it's going to take a bite out of your bank account.
While Meyer isn't naming a price, the 57-room manor on 22 acres has been on the
market several times in recent years, with investors at one point hoping to get
$135 million.
On
the other hand, the castle gets 560,000 paying tourists a year so buying it
won't necessarily bleed you dry.
“At
present, it makes a tidy profit," Meyer told the Telegraph. "But in
the right hands it has the potential to generate far more revenue than we could
ever imagine.”