Sink Your Teeth Into A Landmark

Can $100M buy a life of fiction? Certainly, since it is the asking price for the key to what is commonly known as Dracula's Castle in Romania's Transylvania region.

The inspirational setting for Bram Stoker's "Dracula," the 700+-year-old historical relic is owned by Archduke Dominic Habsburg and family. Once inhabited by the Archduke's grandmother, Queen Marie, in the earlier part of the 20th, the castle was seized by the communist regime in 1948, then was converted into a museum in the 1950s. In 2006, the castle/museum was returned to the Habsburg family.

Targeted for a resort area born of the accession of Romania into the European Union, the castle and its surrounding land is primed for development. Hotel accommodations, spas, and tourist amenities are just a few of the possibilities for this tourist attraction to become a full-fledged destination. There are 450,000 visitors to the castle each year.