DRACULAs castle

The Roman amphitheatre

Where the city of Hunedoara stands today, Stone Age tools were discovered in the hill near the castle called Sanpetru (Saint Peter) and in the surrounding villages. The region was very rich in iron, which had been extracted in the area since the Iron Age of Thracians and later, in the Thracian and Roman times. The remains of eight Dacian iron furnaces have been found at the Sanpetru hill near the castle. The proximity of the city to the network of fortresses and temples in the mountains of Orastie, and the discovery of important monetary treasures of Dacian coins and Roman imperial coins testifies to the importance of this site.
After Dacia was conquered around 102 AD and turned into a Roman province, the iron-rich region attracted the attention of the Romans, who began to exploit it by building furnaces. A "Villa Rustica" emerged in Teliuc, a Roman castrum on Sanpetru hill, outpost of the legio XII Gemina. Other Roman artifacts were discovered in the city area, and also in Pestis, where the remains of a Roman village were discovered.


Corvin Castle at Hunedoara

Built in the 14th century, on the place of an old fortification, on a rock at which bottom flows the little river Zlasti, the castle is a great building, with high and diversely coloured roofs, towers, windows and balconies adorned with laces from carvings in stone.

The impressive size and architectural beauty sets it among the most precious monuments of medieval art, subsequent developments mixing Gothic style with Renaissance and Baroque. It has an impressive bridge, countless towers, a number of interior courts, and two large halls, "Knight Hall" and "Diet Hall", as it housed the diet of Transylvania for a very short period.

Vlad Dracul, the ruler of Wallachia, father of the notorious Vlad Dracula (Vlad Tepes also known as Vlad the Impaler or Dracula), was imprisoned here, as he had fallen into disgrace of Hunyadi, not providing the help promised in the battle against the Turks. (Dracula, who had once been traded as a hostage to the Turks by his own father, later became a protege of Hunyadi and took over Wallachia shortly before his mentor's death of a fever). The castle and surroundings are often used by international film companies for the production of movies about medieval times.