Peleş Castle was built at the initiative of the first King of Romania, Carol I, outside the perimeter of the commune of Podul Neagului, a town with a surface of 24 km in 1874, year in which, on the initiative of the sovereign, the commune receives the name of Sinaia .
A year later, in the center of the village are built the first Boiar houses, and in 1876 the construction of the railway Ploiesti – Predeal begins, which crosses Sinaia. At the same time, between 1873 and 1875 the foundation of Peles Castle was built. The ceremony for laying the foundation stone of the residence was held in a festive setting on August 1875.
Peles Castle was built at the initiative of King Carol I, to serve as a summer residence, invested with political, cultural and symbolic functions. After 1914, Peleş Castle continued to exercise its function of representation and museum, without having lived for 6 months a year, as the founding sovereign used to. Until 1947, it becomes a space for official visits or hosts military ceremonies.
The most important event organized in Sinaia and hosted by Peles Castle until the abdication of King Mihai, in December 1947, was linked to the celebration of the semi-centenary of the castle in 1933 by King Carol II (1930-1940). Between January and March 1948, the castle is closed by order of the communist authorities, and the heritage assets are inventoried. Most of the collections of painting, furniture, textiles, decorative art pieces and books were transferred to the Art Museum in the capital. Since May of the same year, other pieces have entered the custody of different cultural institutions in the big cities of Romania, Bucharest, Brasov, Sibiu, etc. From 1953, the castle becomes a National Museum, open to the general public, while the other buildings located on the Peleş domain.
Two decades later, in 1975, the increasingly critical state of preservation of the building determines the extent of its closure and the evacuation of an important part of the museum’s heritage in the warehouses arranged in an old boyar mansion of the Bibescu family in Posada, a locality about 20 km south of Sinaia.
Between 1966 and 1982, in a former dependency of the royal castle, located near it, was arranged the Museum of Decorative Art (Ceramics), which made use of representative pieces from the old royal collections. At the same time as the massive restoration works, the castle hosts, until 1989, the year of the removal of the communist regime in Romania, a series of visits by heads of state. From 1990, respectively 1993 and to this day, the castles Peles and Pelisor are reopened for visiting.
In 2007, after five years of negotiations between the Romanian State and the Royal House, an agreement is reached, through which Peleş Castle, Pelisor Castle, as well as the entire Peleş domain, made up of former royal dependencies, re-entered the property of King Michael I (1927-1930, 1940-1947), but continues to be administered by the Romanian state. The exception is Fossor Castle, a building opened in 1881. The agreement with the Royal House, expired in 2009, in the case of Pelisor Castle and in 2010, in the case of Peles Castle, was again extended.