To be honest I don’t remember where I heard it, probably on the radio, but there seem to be more than 500 castles in the Netherlands. This surprised me quite a bit. Growing up in the desolate north I always thought my country lacked a lot of culture and remains of our pretty interesting history. I must admit that since I moved to the centre of the country I have changed my opinion a bit. There are a lot of interesting and very old villages around my new (also very old) city, that are really worth exploring.

Still, more than 500 castles, that’s quite a lot for such a small country. So I started to wonder about what exactly makes up a castle. Turns out the definition is quite broad, so a lot of buildings fall into the category of being castles. So what is the definition? Well, here it is:”A castle is a fortified residence of a medieval feudal lord. It’s a private defensive structure, inhabited by that lord with his family, servents and vassals.” Very important is that they themselves defend the fortification. It is not related to any central authority.

As frequent readers of my silly little blog know, this is not my first article about castles. My interest in them has slowly grown. It started when I saw the small fortifications known as ‘borg’ in the north of the Netherlands for the first time as a kid. A good example is the Fraeylemaborg. My interest grew after visiting the castles of Osaka and Himeji in Japan. I started to wonder what castles there are in the Netherlands. Since then I’ve visited several castles and I plan to visit and photograph all of them in my neighbourhood.