A king’s inheritance: The properties of the Romanian royal family

The fortune of the Romanian royal family was estimated at EUR 65 million in 2017, according to the latest edition of Top 300 Richest Romanians put together by weekly magazine Capital. This places the Romanian royal family on the 85

th

spot in the top, the same position it held in 2016 and down from 2015, when it ranked 81

st

, with an estimated fortune of EUR 58 million. Because most of the properties owned by the royal family have a patrimony value, estimating their value is more difficult. Up until 1948, when its properties were confiscated by the communist regime, the royal family used to own thousands of hectares of agricultural land and forests, several castles and buildings. These included six castles: the Curtea de Argeş castle, the Săvârşin castle, the Bran castle, the Mediaşul Aurit castle, the Peleş castle, and the Măneşti castle, Gandulreported. The properties also included five palaces: the Sand Fortress palace in Constanta county, the Elisabeta Palace in Bucharest, the Royal Palace, the Cotroceni Palace and the Snagov Palace. King Michael got back some of these properties after 2000. Adrian Vasiliu, the lawyer of the Romanian royal house, told Gandul in 2013 that the properties that were reclaimed were those that King Michael had inherited from his family, and not those that had belonged to the Domain of the Crown. He also explained that no claim existed at the point from the royal house. Carol I, the first king of Romania and a descendant of the Hohenzollern princely family, came to the country with his own fortune. The Royal House benefited afterwards from donations from land owners, from institutions or businessmen of the time, according to Stirileprotv.ro. At present, the royal family owns four castles with a total of over 450 rooms, almost 20,000 hectares of forests, three buildings and a plot of land in Bucharest, a building and land in Poiana Tapului, a mountain locality in Prahova county, several lodges in Azuga – Predeal, also in Prahova country, and tens of kilometers of forestry roads, Stirileprotv.ro reported. The Sinaia royal domain, which was given back to the king in 2007, encompasses the Peles, Pelişor and Foişor castels. The other royal domain, and its castle, is in Săvârşin, in western Romania’s Arad county. The Peles castle