Rosmeulen Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Rosmeulen Castle (Kasteel Rosmeulen) is a mansion in the neo-rococo style, built at the beginning of the 20th century, before the First World War, at 229 and 241 Neremstraat in Nerem, a district of Tongres (now Tongeren-Borgloon) in the Belgian province of Limburg. The whole estate, covering about 1.6 hectares, comprises the house, a park with a pond, and an entrance enclosure. Access is through a wrought-iron gate held between blue stone pillars; from there, an avenue lined with a balustrade decorated with sphinxes leads up to the façade. The building, roughly rectangular in plan, has two storeys under a slate roof in pseudo-mansard form. Its rendered and painted façades play on projections and recesses: a projecting bay, an annexe in the form of a tower topped with a dome, and a colonnaded gallery animate the elevations. The arched windows retain decorative joinery and ironwork, and abundant stucco decoration runs throughout, characteristic of the neo-rococo taste of the Belle Époque. The Flemish heritage inventory notes that the castle forms, together with the neighbouring factory and the former Nerem railway station on the Tongres–Liège line, the ensemble that marks the north of the former municipality. At the beginning of the 20th century, this factory was a biscuit and speculoos works of some importance. The castle, with its park, gates, pillars and pond, has been listed as established architectural heritage (vastgesteld bouwkundig erfgoed) since 1 February 2018, following an earlier listing in 2009.