Qualla: Rotselaar

Rotselaar: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Edgar, CC BY-SA 3.0. Around 1350, a man named Gerard vander Heyden married up. He had been a Drossard of Brabant, an administrative position with some standing but not noble birth. The marriage made him a noble, and to advertise the fact he built a square brick keep on a Greek-cross floor plan, surrounded by a moat that drew straight from the meeting of the Demer and the Dijle rivers. Six floors of brick and whitestone, connected by a single spiral staircase, the lower vaults sitting in standing water. The keep was for show as much as defense. Seven centuries later it still stands in Rotselaar, the moat still full, the staircase still intact. Gerard's name is otherwise mostly forgotten. The tower is not.

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Image: David Edgar | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rotselaar: Three Rivers Converging

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit flamenc, CC BY-SA 3.0. Rotselaar sits at the junction of three geographies. To the north of the Demer river the land flattens into the Campine, the broad sandy heath that runs up into the Netherlands. South and east lies the Hageland, low hills with the only commercial vineyards in Belgium. West of the...

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Image: flamenc | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rotselaar: Werchter in Late June

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Grasmaaier, Public domain. Drive five minutes north of Rotselaar to the village of Werchter and during most of the year you will find a flat agricultural plain that does not draw second looks. For one weekend in late June or early July, the same plain becomes the largest music festival in Belgium and one o...

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Image: Grasmaaier | Public domain

Rotselaar: Domain Ter Heide

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY 2.5. On the south side of Rotselaar a former gravel pit was flooded in the twentieth century and turned into Domain Ter Heide. The locals call it simply the Plas, the lake. There is a sand beach with a swimming zone marked by buoys, a separate windsurfing zone, a fishing zone that ope...

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Image: CC BY 2.5

Rotselaar: Twin Towns Far From Home

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:inconnu, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rotselaar has three sister-town relationships, and they are an unusually well-chosen set. Bad Gandersheim is a small spa town in Lower Saxony, partnered since 1987 with annual exchanges in language and culture. Vrânceni, a village in eastern Romania near Bacău, was adopted in 198...

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Image: User:inconnu | CC BY-SA 4.0