Hex Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Hex Castle stands in the village of Heks, in the municipality of Heers, in the Limburg Hesbaye. It was built between 1770 and 1784 for Charles de Velbrück, Prince-Bishop of Liège, who had established his country residence and hunting lodge there and who died there in 1784. The prelate intended to create an ‘Arcadia’ in keeping with the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment: around the house he had walled pleasure gardens laid out, then, towards the end of his life, an English-style landscape park, among the first of its kind on the Continent. On his death, the estate passed by inheritance to the Marchant d'Ansembourg family, and then to the d'Ursel family, who still live there and maintain the gardens: a French formal garden, a kitchen garden with its old fig trees, a rose garden and a Chinese garden. The castle, its park, its walls and several outbuildings are protected as a monument by the Flemish Region. The estate regularly hosts festivals devoted to rare plants, roses and kitchen gardens.