Peleș Castle

Lore & Background

King Carol I first visited the site in 1866 and fell in love with the mountain scenery. The Crown purchased 5 square kilometers of land in 1872, and the foundation was laid on 22 August 1873. German architect Johannes Schultz won the design competition with an original plan combining Italian elegance and German aesthetics along Renaissance lines, later expanded by Czech architect Karel Liman, who designed the towers. Construction involved workers of many nationalities, including Italians, Romanians, Albanians, Greeks, Germans, Hungarians, Turks, Poles, Czechs, French, and English. The cost between 1875 and 1914 was estimated at 16,000,000 Romanian lei in gold, with 300 to 400 men working on the site.

Reader's Guide

Peleș Castle served as a royal summer retreat and hunting preserve for King Carol I and his successors. It hosted notable figures such as Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary, artists George Enescu and Sarah Bernhardt, and later foreign dignitaries including Richard Nixon and Muammar al-Gaddafi. After the forced abdication of King Michael I in 1947, the Communist regime seized the estate; the castle was declared a museum in 1953 and closed to the public from 1975 to 1990 under Nicolae Ceaușescu. Following the 1989 revolution, it reopened as a heritage site. In 2006, the Romanian government announced restitution of the Royal Domain to former King Michael I, and the castle is now leased from the royal family to the state. It receives between a quarter and almost half a million visitors annually and has been featured in films such as The Brothers Bloom and the Netflix series A Christmas Prince.

Did You Know?

• Peleș Castle became the world's first castle fully powered by locally produced electricity.
• The castle's main central tower, designed by Czech architect Karel Liman, is 66 meters (217 ft) in height.
• During construction, Queen Elizabeth noted workers speaking fourteen languages and wearing hundreds of national costumes.
• The castle's collection of arms and armor includes over 4,000 pieces spanning four centuries.