Jerrine Habsburg-Lothringen, Alexandra Baillou, Dominic Habsburg – Lothringen, Maria Magdalena Holzhausen şi Elisabeth Sandhorfer, heirs of Princess Ileana of Romania are the new owners of the Bran Castle. The Castle will function as a private museum beginning with the 18th of May 2009, and the official opening will take place on the 1st of June 2009.

The Bran fortress was built on a cliff between Măgura and The Hill of the Fortress, its position conferring an outstanding view towards both the hills of Moeciu and the ones from the Land of Bârsa. The building of the fortress was imposed by strategic and economic reasons.

The strategic reasons underlined by the expansion of the Ottoman Empire which, by the end of the XIV century, began threatening the south-eastern borders of Transylvania; the economic reasons, given by the fact that the commercial road, one of the most important access ways connecting Transylvania to Wallachia, crossed this area. All these reasons determined the Hungarian king Louis I of Anjou to develop strengthening works of the Bran pass.

On December 1st 1920, the people from Brasov – through the voice of their mayor, Mr. Karl Schnell – have given the castle as a present to the Romanian royal family, in whose possession the castle remained for the next twenty seven years.       

After becoming property of the royal family, between 1920 -1930 the castle suffered a series of architectural renovations, aiming to transform it into a modern summer residence. The renovation works were lead by the Czech architect Karel Liman, who also worked at the castles Peles and Pelisor. Two towers for stairs were added, the bulwarks and the shooting gaps became windows, the stoves and the hearths became modern fireplaces. Through her second will, Queen Maria left the Bran castle to Princess Ileana. The Princess – who lived with her husband, Anton of Habsburg, in the Castle from Sonnenberg (Austria) – will not arrive in country in time to find her mother alive. She will still participate to the funeral that took place at Curtea de Argeş. “For me – she will later remember – she was m y mother, my queen and the best friend I ever had”. On August 3rd, 1938, after the queen’s death, the architects D. Antonescu and Eugen Dimitriu have issued the evaluation document of the Bran domain. The castle was evaluated at 4.967.500 lei, the land at 5.800.000 lei and the other buildings belonging to the complex at 9.264.500 lei.

Altogether, the Bran Domain was worth 20.032.000 lei. After a week, on August 11, the official partition was made, the castle becoming property of Princess Ileana, who will permanently return to the country only after the abdication of King Carol II, in September 1940.During the Second World War – while her husband serves in the German army, being taken prisoner – Ileana works as a nurse, the way her mother once did, during the First World War. Near the Bran Castle she sets up a hospital (where she will care for the wounded) she will name “Hospital of the Queen’s Heart”. She will write a book of memories about this episode of her life: Hospital of the Queen’s Heart, published in New York, in 1954. Decades later, when she returned to her homeland, in September 1947, Princess Ileana – now Nun Alexandra – will visit the Bran Castle, finding the hospital in ruins and the little wooden church pulled down. Once King Mihai I abdicates on December 30, 1947, Princess Ileana – along with her husband and children – will leave Romania, leaving the Bran Castle in the custody of the Romanian state, who transformed it into a museum (1957). 

Access by car: 168 km Bucharest-Brasov (E60) & 27 km from Brasov (DN73)
Address of the Bran Castle: Muzeul Bran, Str. Gen. Traian Mosoiu, Nr. 498, 507025, Bran, Jud. Brasov
Phone: 0040-268-238.333; Fax: 0040-268-238.335