Buyer Beware: Dracula's Castle Goes up for Sale

The owners of Bran castle in Transylvania are reportedly open to offers for the 14th century home of Count Dracula.

The owners of Bran castle in Transylvania, which served as inspiration for Bram Stoker when he wrote the novel 'Dracula,' have put the property on the market, according to reports.

The construction of the castle, which attracts 560,000 visitors a year, dates back to 1211, when the Teutonic Knights erected a fortress near the Eastern border of Transylvania.  

The castle was completed in 1388, and was used as a fortress by soldiers attempting to stop the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. It also served as a customs base, holding goods that transferred in and out of Transylvania. 

Irish writer Bram Stoker, who wrote the gothic horror novel 'Dracula' in 1897, took inspiration from descriptions of the castle to describe the home of Transylvanian Count Dracula, a centuries-old vampire and sorcerer who claims to be descended from Attila the Hun.

A sculpture commemorating Petru Darascu, a Romanian priest who survived several Communist prisons, by Ovidiu Nicolae Popa is backdropped by the Gothic Bran Castle, better known as Dracula Castle, in Bran, in Romania's central Transylvania region, Saturday, Oct. 8, 2011

© AP Photo / Selcan Hacaoglu

Bran Castle, Romania

© Flickr / Jorge Láscar

"The castle is on the very edge of a terrific precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests," Bram Stoker wrote in his book. 

Bran Castle, Romania

© Flickr / A H T

The current owners of Bran castle are descendants of Romania's Habsburg royal family, who had the castle restored to them after Communist rule ended there in 1989. 

They are reportedly seeking new owners with the vision and financial means to carry out further renovation work, and one local told the Financial Times that they are rumored to be willing to consider offers of just 12 million euros ($13.4 million) for the castle.