Music festival draws in record crowd to castle in the heart of Transylvania

The Electric Castle music festival in Romania drew almost 100,000 people to the village of Bontida near Cluj-Napoca, in Central Transylvania. Neither rain nor mud discouraged the electric dance music fans who flocked to the Banffy Castle in the four days of the festival. The festival started on Thursday, June 25, and ended on Sunday, June 28, with a memorable concert by British group The Prodigy. Fatboy Slim, Rudimental, and The Cat Empire also had concerts in the festival, along 150 other Romanian and foreign artists and bands. Electric Castle, which reached its third edition this year, had six stages located on the Banffy domain in Bontida. It had a food court with 25 restaurants and covered a surface of 10 hectares. Some 1,000 people worked on this project. The organizers made RON 4 million (some EUR 890,000) from ticket sales, 2% of which went to the local authorities. The locals in Bontida also benefited from this event, as many of them turned their gardens into camping spaces for the tourists. A local made over EUR 4,000 in four days from campers, according to Digi 24 news station. The final number of participants to the festival was 97,000, almost 10,000 higher than in 2014, despite the heavy rain on the first day which turned the venue into a muddy pool. The organizers had to bring in tons of gravel and straws to repair the scene while some local shop owners made big money selling truckloads of rubber boots. editor@romania-insider.com (Photo source: Electric Castle Facebook page)