Vijverhof Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

Vijverhof Castle stands on the Bierbeekstraat, in Korbeek-Lo, a district of the municipality of Bierbeek, within a park traversed by a stream. The site has a long residential history: a "hof" is mentioned at Udekem in 1653, and a pleasure house occupied the grounds in the eighteenth century. The landscaped park was laid out in the mid-nineteenth century, a period to which the garden pavilion and the ice house probably date. The present château was built in 1911–1912 for Baron R.F.L. de Schoutheete de Tervarent. Damaged during the First World War, it was entirely rebuilt in the 1920s according to its original design. It illustrates late neoclassicism inspired by the Louis XVI style: a rectangular volume beneath a mansard roof, an entrance terrace with a balustrade, corner pilasters, and a projecting central section crowned by a triangular pediment. The neoclassical garden pavilion has a Palladian portico and painted decoration with Directoire motifs; the ice house is a cylindrical brick structure with an elliptical vault. The romantic park contains notable trees, including a Maryland oak, a purple beech and a bald cypress. Since the ministerial decree of 13 June 2000, the château, the pavilion and the ice house have been protected as monuments, and the park as a village site.