Vlad Dracul House, Sighișoara

The Vlad Dracul House stands inside Sighișoara Citadel, at Piața Muzeului no. 5, between Citadel Square and the Clock Tower. It is listed in the national List of Historic Monuments as the Paulinus-"Vlad Dracul" House (LMI code MS-II-m-A-15933, RAN code 114523.11) and dated to 1501. It lies within the Historic Centre of Sighișoara, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999. The house takes its name from Vlad II Dracul, later Prince of Wallachia, who stayed in Sighișoara between 1431 and 1435, waiting for the right moment to take the throne and governing the region on behalf of King Sigismund of Luxembourg. In Sighișoara he set up a mint, where he struck new ducats. His son, Vlad III (Vlad the Impaler), was probably born between 1428 and 1431; the historian Radu Florescu holds that he was born in Sighișoara, where his father lived in a three-storey stone house. The identification of this building with Vlad Dracul's residence and with Vlad the Impaler's birthplace comes from local tradition and is not confirmed by any contemporary document. The LMI dating and the observation that the building was rebuilt after that period show that its present form is later than 1431-1435. Today the ground floor of the house is occupied by the Casa Vlad Dracul restaurant, and the facade can be seen from Piața Muzeului. It is reached on foot through the citadel, beneath the Clock Tower or from Citadel Square.