Qualla: Ammersoyen Castle

Ammersoyen Castle: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ninane, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most medieval castles are palimpsests - towers added in one century, wings in the next, a chapel grafted on in the third. Ammersoyen is not. Around 1350 the Van Herlaer family built the entire fortress as a single piece, all at once: a square courtyard with four heavy round towers at the corners and four equally heavy wings between them. That kind of fixed-plan castle is what Count Floris V of Holland had made fashionable, and the Van Herlaers wanted the full version of it. They built it on what was then a branch of the Maas. A few years later the river shifted, leaving the castle marooned in a moat. It has been wet ever since, except for one strange spell in the early twentieth century when the nuns filled the moat in.

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Image: Ninane | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ammersoyen Castle: A Friendship Ends in 1386

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arch at nds-nl.wikipedia, Public domain. Dirk Van Herlaer, the builder, died in 1354. The castle passed within the family for thirty years - to his son Gerhard, then to Gerhard's brother Arent, then to Arent's son Arent Hoeman. Hoeman was one of the closest friends of Duke William of Gelre and Julich, the man who contro...

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Image: Arch at nds-nl.wikipedia | Public domain

Ammersoyen Castle: Sieges, a Fire, and 7,000 Guilders

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Claesz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ammersoyen kept getting attacked. The Habsburgs occupied it briefly in 1513 during the Guelderian Wars; Burgundian troops under Henrick van Nassau held it in the mid-16th century; in 1572 Spanish forces took it for a short time before William of Orange drove them out. The castle ...

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Image: Claesz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ammersoyen Castle: Convent, Bomb, and Washing Machines

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kasteelbeer, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl. In 1873 the last private owner, Arthur de Woelmont, sold what was left of his possessions to the Roman Catholic Church in Ammerzoden. By 1876 the Poor Clares - a contemplative Franciscan order - had moved in, making Ammersoyen only the second Clarisse convent in the Netherlands. ...

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Image: Kasteelbeer | CC BY-SA 3.0 nl

Ammersoyen Castle: Undoing the Centuries

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Friends of Gelderland Castles Foundation bought the castle in 1957 and started over. The plan was to undo everything - to peel back the centuries of renovations and return Ammersoyen to its original medieval form. It was less hard than it sounds. Many of the alterations had s...

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Image: Public domain

Ammersoyen Castle: A Town Hall and a Tourist Site

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Friesburg, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl. From 1976 to 1999 Ammersoyen had a quiet double life: a museum open to visitors, and the actual meeting hall of the municipality of Ammerzoden, which sat in the medieval rooms to do its civic business. In 1999 Ammerzoden was merged into the larger municipality of Maasdriel and th...

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Image: Friesburg | CC BY-SA 3.0 nl