Ancient history

The mysterious burial of Dracula

It is not known how Vlad III died. He fell at the end of 1476 during a fight against the Turks, perhaps betrayed by one of his trusted men, a Turk bought by Mehmed II, who would have beheaded him with a sword stroke. Her embalmed head was sent to the sultan. According to tradition, Vlad is buried in the church of the Snagov Monastery.

In 1933, a body was discovered in a coffin, but it decomposed within minutes on contact with air.

In 1933, archaeologist Dinu V. Rosetti and historian George D. Florescu opened a tomb located under the one which, according to legend, houses Dracula, found empty. They discovered a coffin in which lay the corpse of a man dressed in a velvet suit and whose face was covered with a silken cloth; on contact with the air, the body decomposed in a few minutes. Scientists thought it was the tomb of the voivode.

The presence of the head was not surprising:the Turks tore off the skin of the face and the scalp, which they embalmed by filling them with cotton; it was this macabre trophy that Mehmed II received. This would explain the presence of a veil on the face of the deceased. But it is not certain that this body is indeed that of Vlad III:according to other hypotheses, he would be buried in the church of Comana or in that of Târgsor.