SIDHISOARA, ROMANIA — SIGHISOARA, Romania -- The proprietor of Dracula's house is a dead ringer for Bela Lugosi, but he deals in wine and watery beer, not blood.
The house -- no castle, though considerably larger than its
neighbors -- is a restaurant today. The vaulted first floor, once a barracks for the military garrison, is a beer hall whose tall, amiable manager could easily have been Lugosi's stand-in.
Welcome to Dracula's hometown, the place where the historic figure who was made the legend came into the world.
And if Francis Ford Coppola's recent movie, "Bram Stoker's Dracula," has piqued your interest in the count, this is the place to visit.
It was in Sighisoara that the medieval prince Vlad Dracul had his court. And it was here, amid the intrigue, that the son of Dracul -- Dracula -- was born.
Sighisoara, far enough from Bucharest to have escaped Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's ravaging "modernization," is a Transylvania Shangri-La, a perfectly preserved and operating relic of the Middle Ages.
No modern buildings
Horse-drawn farmers' carts still rattle through the cobbled streets, past stone-and-masonry facades unchanged since they were built by merchants in the 14th century. Cocks crow, men and women dress in simple homemade clothing, families work farms with hand tools, and the sight or sound of motor vehicles is rare. There are no modern buildings to obscure the towers, tile roofs and steeples of the Old Town.
"It is my favorite place in the whole world," says Ray McNally, co-author of "Dracula, Prince of Many Faces."
The real Dracula, Vlad Tepes, was, if anything, more bloodthirsty than the legendary count. Born at the end of 1431 in Sighisoara, he was handed over by his father as a hostage to the Turks, but soon returned commanding armies, unencumbered by compassion.
Known also as Vlad the Impaler, Dracula impaled captured enemies on sharpened stakes; he often dined amid impaled victims and at least once dipped his bread in human blood. Men, women and children were burned, boiled, roasted, mutilated, skinned alive, blinded, strangled and dismembered on his order. Dracula once reportedly lured vagabonds, most of them blind or lame, into a banquet hall, then locked them in and set the hall afire.
