Qualla: Dillenburg https://qualla.com/dillenburg en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:34 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/b/dillenburg-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Dillenburg https://qualla.com/dillenburg Dillenburg: Introduction https://qualla.com/dillenburg/ Photo credit Otto Domes, CC BY-SA 4.0. Listen for the Dutch first. Walk through Dillenburg on the right Saturday and you'll hear them - tour groups, royal delegations, schoolchildren on field trips from Breda or Utrecht, climbing the Schlossberg to stand on the stones where their country began. In 1533, a baby named William was born here in a castle that no longer exists. He grew up to be William the Silent, Prince of Orange, the man who organised the Dutch revolt against Habsburg Spain and laid the foundation of the modern Netherlands. The castle is gone, burned to its casemates in the Seven Years' War. The connection is not. In November 2017 the town officially extended its name to Oranienstadt Dillenburg - Orange-City Dillenburg - to make it impossible to forget.

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Image: Otto Domes | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/b/dillenburg-wp/u1jb-dillenburg-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Dillenburg: A Castle on a Hill https://qualla.com/dillenburg/ Photo credit Otto Domes, CC BY-SA 4.0. Dillenburg lies in the narrow valley of the river Dill on the eastern edge of the Westerwald, where the Dietzholze flows into the Dill. The town is first mentioned in a document of 1254. Late in the thirteenth or early in the fourteenth century the Counts of Nassau threw up a woo...

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Image: Otto Domes | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/b/dillenburg-wp/u1jb-dillenburg-a-castle-on-a-hill.mp3 0:06 2 full Dillenburg: From Exile, a Revolt https://qualla.com/dillenburg/ Photo credit Otto Domes, CC BY-SA 4.0. William the Silent grew up in Dillenburg, married into the upper Habsburg aristocracy, and was for a time one of the wealthiest landholders in the Spanish Netherlands. When Philip II's drive to suppress Protestantism in the Low Countries turned violent in the 1560s, William broke...

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Image: Otto Domes | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/b/dillenburg-wp/u1jb-dillenburg-from-exile-a-revolt.mp3 0:06 3 full Dillenburg: The Wilhelmsturm https://qualla.com/dillenburg/ Photo credit WIlhelm-von-Oranien-Schule, CC BY-SA 4.0. There is no castle on the Schlossberg today, but there is a tower. The Wilhelmsturm was raised between 1872 and 1875 as a memorial to William, and it is now the town's defining silhouette - a neo-Gothic stone column with a balcony view that, on a clear day, takes in the whole Dil...

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Image: WIlhelm-von-Oranien-Schule | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/b/dillenburg-wp/u1jb-dillenburg-the-wilhelmsturm.mp3 0:06 4 full Dillenburg: Iron, Forestry, and a Forgotten Junction https://qualla.com/dillenburg/ Photo credit Oliver Abels, CC BY-SA 4.0. Dillenburg was more than a Nassau memorial site. In 1797 one of the earliest European schools of forestry, founded by Georg Ludwig Hartig at Hungen a decade before, moved to Dillenburg. It taught here for eight years - until 1805, when Napoleon dissolved the Principality of Orang...

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Image: Oliver Abels | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/j/b/dillenburg-wp/u1jb-dillenburg-iron-forestry-and-a-forgotten-junction.mp3 0:06 5 full