Dracula: From Transylvania to Whitby

Jonathan Harker reaches Bistritz at twilight and checks into the Golden Krone Hotel, as the Count has instructed. A letter is waiting for him: "Welcome to the Carpathians." Next morning the landlady begs him not to go on — it is the eve of St George's Day, when evil things "will have full sway" — and when he insists, she hangs a crucifix round his neck. Stoker never came here and no Golden Krone existed in his day; the Hotel Coroana de Aur ("Golden Crown") on the main square later borrowed the name from the novel.

Location precision: The novel's inn is invented; the pin marks the Hotel Coroana de Aur, which was named after it.

Visitor guidance: The Hotel Coroana de Aur stands on Piața Petru Rareș in the centre of Bistrița.

The coach to Bukovina races into the Borgo Pass at nightfall while the passengers cross themselves and press gifts on Harker. At the top a calèche is waiting, driven by a tall man with "very red lips and sharp-looking teeth". A fellow passenger whispers a line from Bürger's ballad: "For the dead travel fast." Wolves circle the carriage before it reaches the castle. The real pass, Tihuța, carries the road from Bistrița to Vatra Dornei over the Eastern Carpathians; Stoker most likely found its old name on a map.

Visitor guidance: The DN17 road crosses the pass; the Hotel Castel Dracula, built in 1976 and renamed after 1989, stands near the top.

The courteous host soon shows what he is. Harker finds every door locked, sees the Count crawl head-first down the castle wall "just as a lizard moves along a wall", narrowly escapes three vampire women, and finally discovers Dracula lying in one of fifty great boxes of earth, gorged with blood. On 30 June, with the boxes loaded and the Count gone, Harker writes what may be his last words and tries to climb down the precipice. The castle is pure invention; Bran Castle, sold to tourists as "Dracula's Castle", has no link to the book.

Location precision: Castle Dracula is invented; Stoker only places it in the mountains beyond the Borgo Pass.

On 6 July the Russian schooner Demeter finishes loading at Varna — silver sand and boxes of earth — and sails at noon with a crew of nine. The captain's log, later found aboard, tells the rest: the Bosphorus on 11 July, then fog, a crewman missing every few nights, a tall thin stranger glimpsed on deck, and finally only the captain left, lashed to the wheel with a crucifix. Varna was already the big Bulgarian port on the Black Sea, and it returns at the end of the book when the hunters wait here for Dracula's ship home.

Location precision: The novel names only the port; the pin marks Varna's harbour.

In one of the greatest storms on record, a schooner flies into Whitby harbour under full sail with a dead man lashed to the helm and runs aground on the sand by Tate Hill Pier, below the East Cliff. The instant she strikes, "an immense dog" leaps from the bow and races up the cliff into the churchyard. Her only cargo: great wooden boxes filled with mould. Stoker spent a holiday in Whitby in 1890 and drew on a real local story: the beaching of the Russian ship Dmitry.

Visitor guidance: Tate Hill Pier and its small beach are at the foot of the old town on the east side of the harbour.

Mina Murray, staying with her friend Lucy Westenra, loves the churchyard on the East Cliff, with its view across the harbour to Kettleness. One night she wakes to find Lucy's bed empty, runs up "the endless steps to the abbey" and sees a white figure on their favourite seat — and something long and black bending over her, with a white face and red, gleaming eyes. Stoker noted names from the real headstones here, including Swales, the name of Dracula's first Whitby victim. The steps still climb from the old town to St Mary's and the abbey ruins.

Visitor guidance: Climb the 199 Church Stairs from Church Street; Whitby Abbey (English Heritage) is just beyond the church.

The house Harker sold the Count is an old walled estate "at Purfleet, on a by-road", called Carfax: twenty acres, a dark pond, a house partly as thick as a castle keep, and an old chapel beside it. Its only neighbour is a private lunatic asylum run by Dr John Seward, whose patient Renfield eats flies and calls Dracula "Master". The boxes of earth from Whitby are delivered here by rail, and the chapel becomes the Count's first lair. Carfax is fictional; Purfleet is a real village on the Thames marshes east of London.

Location precision: Carfax is invented; the pin marks Purfleet village.

A cutting from the Pall Mall Gazette interviews a keeper at the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park: a big grey wolf called Bersicker has broken out of his cage after a tall, thin stranger with a hard face came to look at the wolves. That same night the wolf smashes the window at Hillingham, Lucy's house, and her mother dies of fright. Next morning Bersicker trots back to the zoo with his head cut and full of broken glass. London Zoo, opened to the public in 1847, still occupies the same corner of Regent's Park.

Visitor guidance: ZSL London Zoo is open daily at the north-east corner of Regent's Park; book tickets online.

Driven out of London, Dracula sails home in his box aboard the Czarina Catherine. The hunters wait at Varna, but the ship slips past them to Galatz, the Danube port, on 28 October. From there the box goes upriver by boat on the Sereth and the Bistritza, and the hunters split up: by steam launch, on horseback and by carriage through the Borgo Pass. On 6 November, minutes before sunset beneath the castle, Harker and Quincey Morris break open the box. Morris's bowie knife strikes the heart, the Count crumbles into dust — and Morris dies of his wounds.

Location precision: Galatz is where the final chase starts; the novel's last scene below the castle is not a real place.