Peleş Castle

Full of pomp and brimming with confidence of a new Romanian monarchy, the magnificent century-old Peleş Castle, a 20-minute walk up from the centre, is really a palace. Fairy-tale turrets rise above acres of green meadows and grand reception halls fashioned in Moorish, Florentine and French styles, with heavy wood-carved ceilings and gilded pieces overwhelm our wee mortal minds. Even if you're bent on chasing 'Dracula', it's hard not to get a thrill visiting this castle.

The first European castle to have central heating, electricity and vacuuming(!), Peleş was intended to be the summer residence of Romania's longest-serving monarch, King Carol I (the hand-to-hip statue of him outside looks a little sassy). Construction on the 3500 sq metre edifice, built in a predominantly German-Renaissance style, began in 1875. Some 39 years, more than 400 weary craftsmen and thousands of labourers later, it was completed, just months before the king died in 1914. King Carol I's wife Elisabeta was largely responsible for the interior decoration.

During Ceauşescu's era, the castle's 160 rooms were used as a private retreat for leading communists and statesmen from around the globe. US presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Libyan leader Moamar Gaddafi and PLO leader Yasser Arafat were all entertained by the Romanian dictator here.

The 40-minute tour, which begins regularly, takes in about 10 rooms on the ground floor - bedrooms upstairs are off-limits. In the first Armoury Hall (there's two) look for one of the 11 medieval knight suits with the long pointed boots. Rembrandt reproductions line the walls of the king's office, while real Gustav Klimt works are in the last stop, a theatre/cinema behind the entry.

Guides will point out a secret door in the small library; all rooms have such a door apparently. Queen Elisabeta painted and wrote some 43 books in her life under a pseudonym; the paintings in the poetry room depict 'fairy-tale' scenes she wrote about in one book. In the Council Room, panels made from 14 kinds of wood bore witness to the signing of Romania's neutrality for the last two years of WWI.

Peleş Castle was off-limits to the public from 1947 to 1975, when it was reborn briefly as a museum. Extensive renovation was completed in 1990.

Tickets are sold either at the ticket counter at the nearby Pelişor Palace or under the arches in the centre of the building where a door is signposted 'foreign languages'. Guides speak English, French, Russian and German.