Fort van Brasschaat

En un regard

Le château en bref

Fort Brasschaat stands north of Antwerp, in the municipality of the same name, in the province of Antwerp. It belongs to the outer ring of the Antwerp fortified position, that "national redoubt" designed at the beginning of the twentieth century to make the city a last refuge while awaiting the arrival of the allies. Built between 1909 and 1912 after the land had been expropriated, it is a second-order fort with a triangular plan, surrounded by a moat and fitted with rear caponiers attached to its concrete walls. The roughly 330 men of its garrison fought no battle there in 1914: the Germans attacked Antwerp from the south, and then the Belgian army withdrew to the Yser. Adapted between the two world wars to the use of machine guns and to defence against gas, it too remained out of the fighting in 1940. An attempt at demolition with explosives by military engineers in the 1970s destroyed its left wing before being abandoned. Today surrounded by woodland and closed to the public, the fort serves mainly as a winter refuge for bats.