📍Casa Vlad Dracul, Piața Cetății 5, Sighișoara 545400, Romania
1431 – 1436“I was born around 1431, it is said, in the yellow-walled house on Citadel Square in Sighișoara, a Saxon merchant town on a hill in Transylvania, its walls studded with guild towers. My father, Vlad, had just been admitted to the Order of the Dragon, a brotherhood of knights sworn to defend Christendom against the Turks, and so he was called Dracul, the dragon; I became Dracula, son of the dragon. We lived in that house until I was about four, when my father went to claim the throne of Wallachia and we moved to Târgoviște. As a boy I was handed over, with my younger brother Radu, to the Ottoman sultan as a hostage for my father's loyalty, and spent years at the Turkish court. My father and elder brother were killed by rival nobles. When I took the throne myself, I ruled by fear. Centuries later an Irish writer borrowed my name for his vampire. The house where I was born, inside one of Europe's best-preserved medieval citadels, is now a museum and restaurant.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today