lay-out The first description is given by Jonathan Harker when the calèche reaches the courtyard of the castle: The ruined state of the castle is confirmed by the Count's words: The interior decoration, on the other hand, is still in good shape and the library is well equipped: Harker's window opens into the courtyard, but soon he sets out for a little expedition: All other doors are locked, however. The Count warns him not to sleep outside the rooms he already knows, including the library and the dining room; it seems as if the castle has a life of its own: When Harker finds another open door, though, he ignores this warning and falls asleep in the forbidden chambers: In this room, indeed, the ladies of the castle pay him their tantalizing visit. The Count's room is also one story below Harker's own room; from there, a circular staircase and a tunnel leading to the chapel with the boxes: When Van Helsing comes to Castle Dracula, he goes directly to the ruined chapel and finds Dracula's "brides" in three of the tombs there, as well as Dracula's own tomb, which is empty. Location The site of Dracula's home is only described vaguely by Stoker. The route descriptions hardly mention any recognizable landmarks, but focus on evocations of a wild and snow-covered landscape, haunted by howling wolves and lit by supernatural blue flames at night. Because of this conspicuous vagueness, the annotated Dracula editions by Leonard Wolf, Clive Leatherdale and Leslie Klinger simply assume Bram Stoker had no specific location in mind and place the castle in or immediately next to the Borgo Pass. As a consequence, these editions take for granted that the Count's men, pursued by Harker, Holmwood, Morris, and Seward, follow the Bistrița River all the way up to Vatra Dornei and then travel the route through the Borgo Pass already taken by Van Helsing and Mina. The same view is adopted by Andrew Connell in his Google Map mark-ups. These theories ignore or misinterpret Stoker's hint that around the 47th Parallel, the Count's men are supposed to leave the river and cross-over to Transylvanian territory: The author Hans Corneel de Roos has theorized the site Stoker had in mind while shaping his narrative was an empty mountaintop in the Transylvanian Călimani Mountains near the former border with Moldavia, about 20 miles southeast of the Borgo Pass. Sources