- Type
- Castle
- Built
- 1674 · 17th century
- Location
- North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
- Coordinates
- 51.7433°, 7.0000°
History
A knight named Adolf von Lembeck, a ministerialis of the Bishops of Münster, is recorded in 1177, and his family held the estate until Johann von Lembeck died in 1526. Through the marriage of his daughter Berta it passed to the Westerholt family, who, burdened with debts after the Eighty Years' War, sold the castle in 1631 to a relative from the Dutch branch. During the Thirty Years' War General Peter Melander von Holzappel made it his quarters from 1633, and the family recovered the seat only in 1641. Between 1674 and 1692 Dietrich Conrad Adolf von Westerholt turned the medieval residence into a large Baroque complex, one of the biggest moated castles in the Münsterland, and around 1730 the architect Johann Conrad Schlaun added interiors and the park bridge. Since the heiress Maria Josepha married Ferdinand Dietrich von Merveldt in 1708 the castle has belonged to his family. Damaged in air raids in 1943, it was restored and opened to visitors in 1954.
What to see
The whole complex sits on islands linked by bridges in a rectangular pond of roughly 190 by 160 metres, and its east–west axis runs for half a kilometre, from the approach avenue through the outer bailey to the park. In season, from Good Friday to the end of October, the landscape park is open together with a rhododendron garden of about 150 varieties. The castle museum in the main house can be seen on guided tours on set days, with Flemish tapestries, Chinese porcelain, family portraits and the Baroque Schlaun Hall. The attic houses a local history museum run by a village society, and the former castle kitchen serves as a gallery and wedding room.
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