The castle is located on the plateau of Mount Cetatea, facing the west side of the Transfăgărășan, on a canyon formed on the Argeș River valley, close to the Făgăraș Mountains.

In Dan Simmons 1992 novel "Children of the Night", Poenari Castle is depicted towards the end of the novel as a ritual site to a cult known as "The Family" which consists of the genetically mutated descendants of Vlad the Impaler.

While the novel is pure fiction, the description and depiction of the castle and surrounding region contain mostly accurate geographical and historic information.

In Fallout 3 video game, a vampire-related side quest starts in a fictional, postapocalyptic settlement, constructed on a preserved fragment of a highway in the Washington D.C. area, bearing some visual resemblance to Poenari Castle (e.g. linear structure) and named Arefu (as a hidden reference to the real-life location 6 km [3.7 mi] from Poenari), although the toponym is disguised to look incidental (the roadsign says CAREFUL with C and L faded away).

During the Communist era in Romania, foreign visitors sometimes spent the night inside the ruined structure;[13] among them was Fatimeh Pahlavi's husband, Vincent Lee Hillyer, who claimed that in the night the temperature was much lower than usual in the castle (even in the month of July), smelled rotten flowers although there were none, he suffered from bizarre nightmares, inexplicably contracted keratosis, and got the "overpowering feeling" that he was being watched and got bitten without being physically assaulted.