Hof van Veltwijck Water Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Hof van Veltwijck is a water castle (waterkasteel) in Ekeren, now a district of Antwerp, surrounded by a moat and incorporated into a public park. The estate is documented well before the present castle: a deed of 1455 already describes a property with a hofgracht, an upper courtyard (opperhof) and a lower courtyard (nederhof), covering about 2.5 hectares. The first mention of a stone house surrounded by ditches on this site dates from 1534. In 1545, Aert van Veltwijck, a cloth merchant from Bergen op Zoom, acquired the estate from the Happaert family; the current form of the castle is generally attributed to him, but no deed formally proves this. The original plan was square, flanked by four corner turrets; in the 18th century, the Antwerp merchant Cornelis de Winter, owner from 1754 to 1780, had the north wing removed, giving the main residential block its U-shaped plan. A storey was added to the south wing in 1905, under Baroness de Borrekens.