Most people come to Romania for one castle, and it is the wrong one. Bran, near Brasov, is sold the world over as Dracula's castle, but the connection is largely invention. Bram Stoker never set foot in Romania and wrote his novel from London. The historical Vlad the Impaler ruled Wallachia, south of the mountains, and almost certainly never lived at Bran and may never have visited. The castle with his face on the souvenir mugs is the one place he had least to do with.
That does not make Bran worthless, but it does make it the weakest stop on a strong list. It is a small, handsome fourteenth-century customs fort whose furnished rooms mostly reflect Queen Marie, who used it as a royal residence in the 1920s. It also draws around a million visitors a year, and it feels like it: tour buses fill the lot, the narrow stairwells jam shoulder to shoulder in summer, and the approach is a gauntlet of stalls selling vampire T-shirts and "Dracula wine". Go at opening or off-season, keep expectations low, and it is a pleasant hour. Go at midday in July and it is the trip's low point.
The castle that earns its fame is Peles, in the mountain town of Sinaia. It is worth saying plainly that it is not medieval: it is a neo-Renaissance royal palace, built for King Carol I and finished in 1914. Inside are some 160 rooms, carved-wood ceilings, a library with a hidden passage, a hall holding roughly four thousand weapons, and a concert hall with a working pipe organ. Entry is by guided tour only, and there is a separate photo permit that the staff enforce. It is busy, and it is the one castle almost everyone agrees is worth the queue.
The sleeper is Corvin, at Hunedoara. This is the genuine article that Bran only pretends to be: a real fifteenth-century Gothic fortress, expanded from the 1440s by John Hunyadi on an older keep, with a wooden drawbridge over a moat, a Knights' Hall, towers, and a torture chamber. It is the most dramatic castle in the country and, because it sits about 270 kilometres from Brasov beside an old steelworks, it is also the least crowded. That distance is exactly why most Bran-and-Peles day-trippers never see it, and exactly why it is worth the detour.
The real Dracula pilgrimage is Poenari, and hardly anyone makes it. It is not a furnished castle but a ruin on a rock spur above the Arges gorge, and it is the fortress Vlad the Impaler actually held, repaired around 1457 and used as his guerrilla base against the Ottomans in 1462. Reaching it means climbing 1,480 concrete steps, a stiff half-hour up through forest now strung with barbed wire to keep the bears off the path. At the top are broken walls, a few grim re-enactment figures, and a view down the gorge toward the Transfagarasan. It is far more connected to the real story than anything at Bran, and on most days you will have it nearly to yourself.
The castle with Vlad's face on the mugs is the one he never lived in. The one he actually held is a ruin almost nobody climbs to.
The last piece of the true story is Sighisoara, a UNESCO-listed medieval citadel that is a living town rather than a museum, with cobbled lanes, a covered stairway up to the hill church, and a fourteenth-century clock tower whose figures turn on the hour. Vlad was reputedly born here around 1431; the house is now a restaurant. It is the most atmospheric overnight on the route, best after the day-trip buses leave and the cobbles empty out.
Put the verdicts together and the loop falls into place from a base in Brasov: Peles for the palace, Corvin for the drama, Poenari for the history, Sighisoara for the evening, and Bran only if you are passing and get there early. A car makes it possible; Corvin, Poenari and the mountain roads are awkward to impossible by public transport. Come in May and June or September and October for thinner crowds, with one catch: the Transfagarasan, the high road to Poenari's end of the country, only opens in the warmer months, so a loop that includes the drive wants high summer despite the crowds. Skip the one castle everyone photographs, and Romania turns out to have a much better set behind it.