Constanta, a city on the Black Sea Coast, a place with hot summer days and bitterly windy winters is the fondest of my childhood memories. This makes it really hard to write a quick paragraph to introduce it. I’ll do my best to give you a feel for it and I hope you enjoy our virtual walk!

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1. Dracula was a real person.

Count Dracula is a fictional character in Bram Stocker's Dracula. Inspired by one of the best-known figures of Romanian history, VladTepes (Vlad the Impaler), but still a fictional character.

2. Vlad the Impaler is a made up character

Vlad III Price of Wallachia, probably best known for his resistance against the Ottoman Empire and for the cruel punishments he imposed on his enemies, was a voivode of Wallachia in the fifteen century. It inspired the name of the vampire in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, but it’s not a fictional character.

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Many writers have embellished the Bram Stoker novel – Dracula – by claiming that before writing he spoke to experts on Transylvanian history and culture. Stoker’s actual novel was incredibly inventive: many of the motives behind the storylines into the book were not based on his research on local legends and it seems that he was scarcely aware of the folklore, history and geography of Transylvania, whatever the extent of Stokers’ knowledge of Vlad the Impaler and vampirism. Despite the handful of books he consulted, where his story lines coincide with fact is just that – co-incidence. In fact, the reality of the region which features in Dracula and has come to be closely associated with the Count (Bistrita, Bistritz in German), is more interesting than Stokers’ fiction!

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Vlad III, Price of Wallachia is most commonly known for inspiring the name of the vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.   It is absolutely clear that Stoker had no basis for attributing the belief in impalement (as a ‘cure’ for a vampire) to Vlad Ţepeş when there is no evidence that Vlad believed that it was so.  Further, claims that Vlad raised the stakes in awfulness of execution because he introduced impalement cannot be sustained since, according to Hungarian popular tradition, it was a method (for execution) for dealing with them that had been long recognised and, not the least, pre-dated Vlad Ţepeş’ reign.  More striking still, with regards to the “devilry” attributed to Vlad Ţepeş by the Transylvanian Saxons, as a method of execution, impalement had long been prescribed by the Saxons in their penal code.

Let us begin this round-up of Transylvania with the town which features in Count Dracula – Bistriţa (or Bistritz in German).  The sense of history and tradition in Bistriţa is tangible.  Because of the geographical isolation of the region, its timeless quality and the fact that it is a frontier zone it has a particular atmosphere.  The authentic folklore and Stoker’s influence compete side-by-side for attention but the reality is much more interesting than Stoker could possibly have imagined.

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