In my novel, I am wanting to use a castle that is in Romania. It is now being used as a museum. My question is this, should I somehow contact them to make sure it is okay if I use the building? Or is it okay not to contact them? I was wanting to use actual directions in my novel b/c I found a map of the building online. Thanks for any input.

Britney

sorry to have to disagree, but you don't really have to... it's a public building, not a home, so it's perfectly legal to use it in your story... just as anyone can use the white house or the capitol, or the eiffel tower, big ben, and such... and DO...

Public buildings and public places are fair game. Read any mystery novel set in New York City. Or any novel set in any big city.

By now, many thousands of fictional characters have been murdered in Central Park, in Grand Central Station, in the Empire State Building, and you name it.

If writers had to contact every place used in fiction, there wouldn't be time to write the fiction.

I agree with Mr. Ritchie (and building don't have legal rights, only the owners). As a sidebar, I work in the architectural and engineering field; we can copyright the plans we do but we can't actually copyright the design of a building. If someone wanted to build a building just like the Empire State Building or even your own house, they're free to do so as long as they draw up their own plans.

ac

QUOTE: Originally posted by JustJim

As long as what you write is in no way negative, then I expect they'd be only too happy with the publicity.


By negative, I meant something that would keep people from visiting. A gory murder would probably have fans there (which the museum would probably love) pacing out the area where the murder occured.