Peleș Castle is a Neo-Renaissance castle in the Carpathian Mountains, near Sinaia, in Prahova County,

Romania, on an existing medieval route linking Transylvania and Wallachia, built between 1873 and
1914. Its inauguration was held in 1883. It was constructed for King Carol I.

When King Carol I of Romania (1839–1914), under whose reign the country gained its
independence, first visited the site of the future castle in 1866, he fell in love with the
magnificent mountain scenery. In 1872, the Crown purchased 5 square kilometres (1.9 sq mi) of
land near the Piatra Arsă River. The estate was named the Royal Estate of Sinaia. The King
commissioned the construction of a royal hunting preserve and summer retreat on the property,
and the foundation was laid for Peleș Castle on 22 August 1873. Several auxiliary buildings were
built simultaneously with the castle: the guards' chambers, the Economat Building, the Foișor
hunting lodge, the royal stables, and a power plant. Peleș became the world's first castle fully
powered by locally produced electricity.

The first three design plans submitted for Peleș were copies of other palaces in Western Europe,
and King Carol I rejected them all as lacking originality and being too costly. German architect
Johannes Schultz won the project by presenting a more original plan, something that appealed to
the King's taste: a grand palatial alpine castle combining different features of classic European
styles, mostly following Italian elegance and German aesthetics along Renaissance lines. Works
were also led by architect Carol Benesch.[2] Later additions were made between 1893 and 1914
by the Czech architect Karel Liman, who designed the towers, including the main central tower,
which is 66 metres (217 ft) in height. The Sipot Building, which served as Liman's headquarters
during the construction, was built later on. Liman would supervise the building of the nearby
Pelișor Castle (1889–1903, the future residence of King Ferdinand I and Queen Marie of
Romania), as well as of King Ferdinand's villa in the Royal Sheepfold Meadow.

The cost of the work on the castle undertaken between 1875 and 1914 was estimated to be
16,000,000 Romanian lei in gold (approx. US$ 120 million today). Between three and four
hundred men worked on the construction. Queen Elisabeth of the Romanians, during the
construction phase, wrote in her journal:

Italians were masons, Romanians were building terraces, the Gypsies were coolies. Albanians
and Greeks worked in stone, Germans and Hungarians were carpenters. Turks were burning
brick. Engineers were Polish and the stone carvers were Czech. The Frenchmen were drawing,
the Englishmen were measuring, and so was then when you could see hundreds of national
costumes and fourteen languages in which they spoke, sang, cursed and quarreled in all dialects
and tones, a joyful mix of men, horses, cart oxen and domestic buffaloes.