Poenari Castle

Perched on a rocky spur above the Argeș River and reachable only by climbing 1,480 concrete steps, Poenari Castle was the real mountain stronghold of Vlad III, the 15th-century Wallachian prince better known as Vlad the Impaler — a far more authentic claim to "Dracula's castle" than the more famous Bran Castle. Vlad expanded the fortress in the 1450s using forced labor reportedly drawn from Wallachian boyars he suspected of disloyalty, sentencing many to work here until their clothes rotted off their backs. According to local legend, when Ottoman forces closed in on the castle in 1462, Vlad's wife chose to leap from its highest tower into the river far below rather than be captured, and the waterway has been known ever since in local tradition as Râul Doamnei, the "Lady's River." Earthquakes and time have reduced much of the fortress to fragments of wall clinging to the cliff, but the stairway climb and the sheer drop below unsettle most visitors long before they reach the ruins.