En un regard
Le château en bref
Château Tivoli is a Neoclassical country house in Mechelen, built in 1802 by Corneel Scheppers, a member of a well-known Mechelen family. According to the city of Mechelen, Scheppers is said to have conceived the project after a stay in Tivoli, near Rome, in 1792, and to have given that name to the whole estate. The house was surrounded by annular moats, a pond and outbuildings, and an orangery is attached to it. Corneel Scheppers used it only as a country retreat. His son Victor Scheppers, a canon of Mechelen, temporarily ran a school there. In 1877 the estate passed to Martin François Louis Van Diepenbeek, whose family kept it for two further generations. After the death of Renée Degraux-Van Diepenbeek, the city of Mechelen acquired the estate in 1978, when it covered around 21 hectares, of which about 12 survive today as a park, part of the land having been divided into building plots. In 1990, the artist Jan Fabre temporarily covered the château with a blue ballpoint pen drawing made using some 150,000 pens. The château, its park and its outbuildings have been protected since 1996. A restaurant and events venue had been operating there since 1991. In late January 2025, a fire destroyed the roof structure and damaged other parts of the building. A temporary roof was installed in 2025, and the city hopes to reopen the château in 2027 or 2028 after restoration.