Schloss Burgsteinfurt

Schloss Burgsteinfurt stands on a circular island in the Steinfurter Aa, the oldest water-burganlage in Westphalia. Its three parts—the Upper Castle, the Lower Castle and the mill—rise from man-made islands linked by bridges. The first stone tower, with walls two metres thick, was built in the 12th century by Rudolf II of Stenvorde on a mound raised in the river’s marshland. A second island soon carried the Buddenturm, a mighty keep whose five-metre walls survived until the late 18th century. By the 13th century the separate islands were joined by a ring wall and a shared moat, while a chapel was built above a burial chamber inside the curtain. The castle passed to the Bentheim-Steinfurt line in 1421 after the Steinfurt lords died out. After decades of neglect and war damage, Gräfin Walburg and her son Arnold commissioned a Renaissance makeover in 1558, adding an oriel by Johann Brabender of Münster. The Baroque stables and riding hall followed between 1723 and 1729, and in the 19th century the architect Franz Anton Nordhoff restored the complex, replacing old parts with modern ones and erecting the stone bridge still in use today. Visitors walk across the 1888 bridge to the Upper Castle, where the Romanesque double chapel and the late-Gothic knights’ hall remain. The Lower Castle preserves the Rheinischer Hof of 1617 and two large farm buildings. Beyond the moat lies the Bagno park, laid out first as a French garden and later transformed into an English landscape by Graf Ludwig, who opened it to the public in the 18th century. The park once held 105 pavilions, water features and statues on 125 hectares, and today its concert gallery draws internationally known performers.