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In 1212, Teutonic Knights built the wooden castle of Dietrichstein as a fortified position in the Burzenland at the entrance to a mountain valley through which traders had travelled for more than a millennium, but in 1242 it was destroyed by the Mongols. The first documented mentioning of Bran Castle is the act issued by Louis I of Hungary on 19 November 1377, giving the Saxons of Kronstadt (Brașov) the privilege to build the stone citadel on their own expense and labor force; the settlement of Bran began to develop nearby. In 1438–1442, the castle was used in defence against the Ottoman Empire, and later became a customs post on the mountain pass between Transylvania and Wallachia. It is believed the castle was briefly held by Mircea the Elder of Wallachia during whose period the customs point was established. The Wallachian ruler Vlad Țepeș (Vlad the Impaler) 1448–1476 does not seem to have had a significant role in the history of the fortress, although he passed several times through the Bran Gorge. Bran Castle belonged to the Hungarian Kings but due to King Vladislas II's failure to repay loans, the city of Brasov gained possession of the fortress in 1533. Bran played a militarily strategic role up to the mid-18th century. In 1920, the castle became a royal residence within the Kingdom of Romania. It became the favorite home and retreat of Queen Marie. The castle was inherited by her daughter Princess Ileana who ran a hospital there in World War II: it was later seized by the communist regime with the expulsion of the royal family in 1948. In 2005, the Romanian government passed a special law allowing restitution claims on properties illegally expropriated, such as Bran, and thus a year later the castle was awarded ownership to Dominic von Habsburg, the son and heir of Princess Ileana. On 18 May 2009, the Bran Castle administration was transferred from the government to the administration of Archduke Dominic and his sisters Maria-Magdalena Holzhausen and Elisabet Sandhofer. On 1 June 2009, the Habsburg's opened the refurbished castle to the public as the first private museum of the country and disclosed with Bran Village a joint strategic concept to maintain their domination in the Romanian tourist circuit and to safeguard the economic base in the region. On 12 May 2014, it was reported that the current owner, Archduke Dominic, has placed the castle on the open market for sale after reportedly offering it to the government of Romania for £47 million