Qualla: Anholt Castle

Anholt Castle: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tuxyso, CC BY-SA 3.0. In a glass case inside the family archive sits a small lead bullet, deformed by impact. It is the slug that killed Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico on a hill outside Querétaro on 19 June 1867. His aide, Felix Salm-Salm, brought it home to the Lower Rhine. Home was Anholt Castle, the broad moated palace on the river Issel that the Salm-Salm princes still own today. That a bullet from a Mexican firing squad ended up on a German castle wall is the kind of fact Anholt collects without fuss. Eight hundred years of dynastic intrigue, marriage, plunder and restoration have left the place crowded with souvenirs.

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Image: Tuxyso | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anholt Castle: Water and Stone

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hermann Luyken, CC0. The castle stands on swampy ground, its tufa walls planted on timber piles that have held since before 1169. At the heart of the complex is the Dicke Turm, the Thick Tower, an eleven-meter round keep whose entrance once sat seven meters above the courtyard so that an attacker had...

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Image: Hermann Luyken | CC0

Anholt Castle: The Salm-Salm Inheritance

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Günter Seggebäing, Coesfeld, CC BY-SA 3.0. Anholt has passed through three great dynasties: the Lords of Zuylen, who freed its inhabitants from serfdom in 1347; the Bronkhorst-Batenburgs, raised to Imperial Counts in 1621; and from 1647 onward the House of Salm-Salm, who arrived through marriage and never left. They survi...

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Image: Günter Seggebäing, Coesfeld | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anholt Castle: Rembrandt on the Wall

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. In spring 1945 seventy percent of the castle was destroyed. Prince Nikolaus Leopold zu Salm-Salm began rebuilding almost immediately, and to fund the work he opened parts of the house to the public. Today visitors walk through state rooms hung with the largest privately owned pai...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anholt Castle: Anholter Schweiz

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Between 1892 and 1900, Prince Leopold zu Salm-Salm built himself a private Switzerland. Inspired by Lake Lucerne, he laid out a miniature lake with artificial rocks and a wooden chalet on the estate grounds. The Anholter Schweiz became a game reserve in the early twentieth centur...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Anholt Castle: Castle, Hotel, Wildlife Park, Golf Course

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Anholt does not pretend to live entirely in the past. The wildlife park draws families. The on-site hotel rents rooms with views over the moat. There is a restaurant with terraces, a water pavilion, and a golf course on the grounds. The castle has appeared on television, includin...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0