Vlad III Dracula's head was sent to the sultan, and the grave at Snagov opened in 1933 held no body

Vlad III, called Țepeș, the Impaler, spent part of his childhood as a hostage at the Ottoman court with the future Mehmed II. He was killed at the end of December 1476 or early in January 1477, fighting Ottoman forces who backed his rival Basarab Laiotă for the throne of Wallachia. A Slavic tale compiled at the end of the 15th century says boyars loyal to Laiotă murdered him. His head was sent to the sultan, who had it impaled. For centuries tradition held that monks buried his body secretly under a slab in the island church at Snagov. In 1933 the archaeologist Dinu Rosetti dug under the slab. Adevărul reported on 11 December 1933 that the pit held refuse and horse and sheep bones. In 1935 Rosetti wrote that no grave was found under the slab, and he concluded the original grave had been moved and looted. In 2002 the historian Constantin Rezachevici of the Romanian Academy argued for Comana, the monastery Vlad founded in 1462, nearer the battle. Radu Șerban demolished it and rebuilt it in 1589. In the 1970s archaeologists found a skeleton without a skull in a rotted coffin in the old crypt, which Rezachevici suggested was Vlad's. In 2014 researchers claimed Vlad had been ransomed by his daughter Maria and buried in Santa Maria la Nova in Naples. Critics noted the claim's main advocate, Raffaello Glinni, is a lawyer, and no new evidence had appeared by 2024. The body has not been identified.