Qualla: Lembeck Castle

Lembeck Castle: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rainer Lippert, CC0. Roll up to Lembeck Castle in a horse-drawn carriage on a wet seventeenth-century evening and you would not need to step into the weather. The architects of the baroque rebuild gave the manor a Renaissance feature borrowed from Florence: a covered passage behind the sandstone portal, modeled on the entrance halls of the Palazzo Pitti and Palazzo Strozzi, where carriages could be turned or parked while their occupants stepped out dry. The same trick appears at the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. It is a detail you do not expect to find in the wet flatlands between the Ruhr and the Münsterland, and yet here it is, in a Westphalian moated castle on an island in a rectangular pond.

Read more: Lembeck Castle on Qualla

Image: Rainer Lippert | CC0

Lembeck Castle: An Island in a Bog

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dickelbers, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name Lembeck comes from a Low German compound meaning, roughly, slimy brook. The site was a swamp long before it became a castle. The Lords of Lembeck dammed a meadow stream to create a rectangular pond, 190 by 160 meters, and built their fortress on the island that remained....

Read more: Lembeck Castle on Qualla

Image: Dickelbers | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lembeck Castle: Schlaun's Hall

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Klaus Ehlers, CC BY-SA 3.0. The most famous room in the castle is the work of one of Westphalia's great architects. Johann Conrad Schlaun, the man who shaped much of Münster's baroque skyline, designed the grand ballroom in the north wing. At 140 square meters it spans the full width of the wing. Black marb...

Read more: Lembeck Castle on Qualla

Image: Klaus Ehlers | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lembeck Castle: The Fidelitas Cabinet

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arnoldius, CC BY-SA 4.0. Not every room is grand. Some, like the Fidelitas Cabinet, are small and strange and deeply personal. The cabinet takes its name from an oil painting on its ceiling, an allegorical figure representing Fidelity. It is the only surviving original wall painting in the castle. The oa...

Read more: Lembeck Castle on Qualla

Image: Arnoldius | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lembeck Castle: 1943 and After

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rolfcosar, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lembeck did not escape the Second World War. In 1943 bombings damaged significant portions of the building, and occupying forces caused further harm. The northwest corner of the former library took a direct hit and was never restored to its previous condition. After the war the o...

Read more: Lembeck Castle on Qualla

Image: Rolfcosar | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lembeck Castle: Rhododendrons in May

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oskarp, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1960 the castle's head gardener, Heinrich Nottelmann, began planting rhododendrons in the park. He kept planting. By 1967 a four-hectare section of the grounds had been turned over entirely to the experiment. Today the Heinrich-Nottelmann-Park contains one hundred and fifty rh...

Read more: Lembeck Castle on Qualla

Image: Oskarp | CC BY-SA 3.0