Bram Stoker's Dracula

Many legends have been said about Dracula and his mysterious land of Transylvania full of phantoms and vampires.More that 700 novels or films have been written. Is this a proof that the sun of Vlad Dracul born in a house near the Clock Tower in Sighisoara is still alive after 500 years, at least in out dreams..or maybe nightmares?

Beside the negative fame brought by the name of Dracula and by the stories of the Transylvanian Saxon merchants, at the end of the 19th century another decisive element was added at the future renown of the Romanian ruler. An Irishman, Bram Stoker, published at London, in 1897, his novel called "Dracula, the Vampire from the Carpathians". The novel was based on folk beliefs and distorted historical elements.

The vampire theme wasn`t for the first time in the literature. Earlier, in 1819, a book called "The Vampire", signed by Byron, but most probably written by Polidori, his secretary, was published. Yet, Bram Stoker will be the one to bring the celebrity of Dracula. His novel, otherwise rather weak, arrived in 1903 at the sixth edition and it was the best sold book in the world after the Bible (what a strange comparison!).

Bram Stoker had never traveled to Romania. His information came from the London libraries, as Jonathan Harker himself, one of the main characters of the novel, stated: "Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe." The region that Harker describes is the Bargau region, near Bistrita. He tells that just in the pass which links Transylvania with Moldavia, in the ruins of a castle, Dracula, a Transylvanian count lives and every night he turns into a vampire.

he place where the castle is isn`t identified: "I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordance Survey Maps". So, the famous Dracula`s castle is not located at Bran (wrongly linked to the legend), but at Bargau (Tihuta), where, in order to exploit the legend, a mediaeval looking hotel, called "Dracula Castle", was built in the 1980s.