About This Resource
Poenari Castle, one of the real fortresses of Vlad III (Vlad the Impaler, the historical Dracula), is accessed via an arduous climb of 1,480 concrete steps up the mountainside. Located in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, the castle sits dramatically on a cliff overlooking the Argeș River. The stairway was built in the 1970s to provide tourist access to the 13th-century ruins. The climb is steep and exhausting but offers increasingly spectacular views. The combination of the challenging stairs, remote mountain setting, and connection to the Dracula legend makes this one of Romania's most atmospheric historical sites. The stairs themselves have become part of the legend.
