DraculaWorld
Penny Young provides the background to the debate surrounding Romania's proposed Dracula theme park.
'His face was a strong aquiline with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere ... The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth.’
Thus does the Anglo-Irish civil servant-turned novelist, Bram Stoker, introduce Count Dracula in his eponymous book, published in 1897. Stoker’s mesmerising character lives in a castle in the swirling mountain mists of Transylvania and feasts on the blood of maidens. The story is a good one and it is hardly surprising Dracula was adopted by Hollywood less than half a century later.
Dracula has again been hitting the headlines, thanks to a row over Romania’s plans to build a Dracula theme park next to the historic citadel town of Sighisoara in Transylvania.
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