100 Lei Peleș Castle

Issued as part of Romania's ongoing numismatic program commemorating the country's historic royal residences, this piece honors Peleș Castle in Sinaia, built under Carol I beginning in 1873 as a summer retreat and completed in 1914. The castle was the first in Europe to have central heating and its own electricity plant — details that made it a genuine engineering curiosity at the time of construction, not merely an architectural statement.

Romania nationalized Peleș in 1948 under communist rule; it remained closed to the public for much of Ceaușescu's tenure and became the subject of a prolonged restitution dispute with the royal family after 1989 that was still unresolved when this coin was struck.