DRACULA`S REAL CASTLE - in work12:21 Nov 17 2011
Times Read: 770
This is an article I`m working at right now.
When it will be finished I`ll added as one of my pages and submit it as a VR article.
Please be patient!
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picture poenari castle
VLAD`S REAL CASTLE
The real Dracula Castle is not Bran(despite the government rumors placed all over the internet), but Poenari castle.
Bran was a Hungarian , not Vallachian possession during Vlad`s three reigns and had a Hungarian garrison lead by a person with a German name (Transilvania was inhabited by a few nations during Renaissance: Romanians-aka Vallachians; Suebs and Saxons - Germanic populations; Hungarians and Sekeli). This German named person, the head of the Bran castle, was directly responsible to the orders of the Hungarian King: Matias Corvinus, so there is no question that BRAN WAS NEVER DRACULA`S CASTLE!
The Romanian government now-days present it as Dracula`s castle because the real castle, the one from Poenari is hard to reach, being intended as a refuge in times of war. And that`s exactly what it served for at the end of Vlad`s main reign in 1462.
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picture bran castle
Some confounded it with it`s replica, the Tepes Castle from Bucharest, now the place where the National Office For The Cult Of Heroes has it`s quarters today. This smaller then the original building was built in Bucharest at the beginning of the XXth century and is the place where the king Carol I of Romania had an apartment (not in the Castle from Poenari as some articles of the internet claim).
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picture poenari castle
THE EASTER SACRIFICE
The castle from Poenari was not the capital of the Vallachian state, but was the personal castle of Dracula. The official capital was Targoviste and Vlad also built a Voivodal court at Bucuresti ( the nowdays capital of Romania) and all that`s left from it is the ruins named Old Princely Court - Curtea Veche.
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picture OLD COURT
The castle was re-built by Vlad on older ruins of a fortress during his second reign. If we consider that the German "Chronicles" about Vlad have a seed of truth, the re-building begun on 25 march 1459 during Easter(1).The tale about the boyars who were punished by Vlad on the accusation that they were destabilizing the Voivodal throne is well-known.
In the German Chronicles some data are obviously fakes: the sum of 50 voivodal changes at the throne is certainly exaggerated, also the number of 500 boyars killed and even present at the feast.Even the older boyar at the feast couldn`t have known more then 16 changes of voivodes at the throne and from the signed papers of the court only 11 from 23 members of the High Council of boyars are missing (and not all of them killed).(2)
The German Chroniclaes are just a requisitory of exaggerated facts and without mentioning the reasons of Dracula`s actions.
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picture targoviste princely court
Another source, more trustworthy, makes things clearer. In Letopisetul Cantacuzinesc(a chronicle reviewed and translated in Romanian in XVII-th century) has a passage where the real causes and repercussions of Vlad`s actions:
"Vlad Voivod Tepelus. He made the fortress from Poenari and made the sacred monastery of Znagov. and he did another thing with the townspeople of Targoviste, because he proved that the boyars of Targoviste buried his brother alive.And to find the truth, searching his brother in the pit, they found him facing downwards.
And when the Easter day came, being all the townspeople at the feast and the young ones at the dances, without noticing, he caught them all.So, all of the guilty old people were staked and he toured the town with them, and all of the younger ones with their wives, with the teenagers and maidens, as they were adorned for Easter, all of them were taken to Poenari, and they worked at the castle until all their clothes broke on them and they remained naked.That`s why they called him Tepelus.He reign 15 years."(3)
This passage demonstrates that Dracula was acting on the behalf of evidences and not randomly to simply spread terror and the discovering of his brother in the upside down unnatural position for a prince burial makes us think at the creating of the strigoi.
The Orthodox Christian Church used to practice ritual un-burial at 3, 5, or 7 years to see if the dead was not an un-dead. The discovery of a person upside-down could indicate a strigoi and a proper burial was required ... or just staking the dead in the heart.The practice of this un-burial after 7 year was only a few years ago forbidden by the Church but is still practiced on a large scale in Romania today even if the young generations don`t know the meaning of the ritual.
Vlad`s pain must be intense at this event and his revenge was not only justified but imposed.
From 5 march 1458 until the next year, only 3 boyars were missing from the documents of the High Council, comparing with the documents from the previous year:Codrea - Vornic (the title for Justice Ministry), Manea - the son of Udriste and Milea - Paharnic (The Cupbearer). This makes us think that the victims were not so many and Dracula was not just a mad tyrant, randomly killing everyone for pleasure.
A Bysantine contemporary Chronicle(4) informs us that the goods of the victims passed at his favorites that were loyal nobleman of different nationalities(Hungarians, Serbs, even Tartars or Turks), so Dracula`s racial blind fury against a race or a religion must be dismissed also.
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picture poenari castle on the cliff
THE VULTURE`S NEST
The castle was raised first in the XIIIth century and the fell into ruin, rebuilt by Vlad in the XVth century and then abandoned in the first half of the XVIth century(5) and fell again into ruin in the XVIIth century.This late fell into ruin may be the cause of the surviving of the castle because the Otoman Empire later destroyed almost all of the fortresses from Vallachia, including the fortress that Vlad raised in Bucharest.
It is placed on the top of a high cliff just as a vulture`s nest and has a great view over the valley that leads from Vallachia to Transilvania. It was re-build in 1458, as you saw, using a Bysantine technique of rising walls(remember that the Bysantine Empire had fallen only a few years ago in 1453). Even if the castle is placed near the source-zone of devastating earthquakes, the fortress is still standing today because of the special technique: two walls made of bricks fixed by quick lime, filled between with stones from the river that flows at the base of the cliff.
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picture poenari castle wall
The form of the fortress is a long vaguely triangular one with walls thick of two-three meters and having five defensive tours(four round towers and one rectangular shaped).
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picture with the way towards castle
Vlad was climbing the cliff on his horse on a secret path.The 1480 steps we climb on today date from the Communist Regime period, when the castle was partially restored (1965-1872).At the top of the climbing there is a little house in traditional style where the Museum of Curtea De Arges has a permanent exhibition about the castle. Because the place was intended as defensive fortress and not a palace, it is hard to reach and is not the ideal place for a tourist visit, still the view could be a good reward for the long climbing.
"The castle entrance is guarded by a single keeper who speaks almost no English. The entrance fee is 5 Romanian lei (less than $2 U.S.)."(6)
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picture with the entrance poenari
LEGENDS ABOUT A DEMONIC PLACE
1. Matei Cazacu, Dracula,
2. N.Stoicescu ,
3.
4.Chalkokond
5.In an edict from 1568, the nearby village Capataneni is donated to the monastery of Iezer, indicating that at that moment the Castle was abandoned.
6. Staking out Dracula's castle in Romania, http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-30/travel/romania.dracula.castle_1_vlad-dracula-castle-entrance-transylvania/2?_s=PM:TRAVEL
other RELATED LINKS:
-POENARI CASTLE WIKI
-OLD COURT WIKI
-TARGOVISTE ROYAL COURT WIKI
-BUCHAREST TEPES CASTLE WIKI
-BRAN CASTLE WIKI
-POENARI CASTLE ON YOUTUBE
COMMENTS
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LordessRubi
13:51 Nov 19 2011
Interesting!
Dragonrouge
21:38 Jan 12 2012
Thank you, Rubi!