Schloss Ringenberg

Schloss Ringenberg stands in the south-east of Hamminkeln, a town in the Lower Rhine region of Germany. It is a moated water castle built of brick in Dutch classical Baroque style. The three-winged main building is surrounded by a wide moat and has round corner towers capped with bulbous lantern roofs.

The castle’s history reaches back to a 13th-century stronghold built by Sueder III of Dingden to control the marshy Isselbruch borderland. After changing hands between bishops and counts, it was repeatedly fortified and later destroyed in the Thirty Years’ War. In 1648 the brothers Jakob and Alexander von Spaen began rebuilding the ruins, completing the present structure by 1661. The Dutch master builder they hired also worked on Biljoen near Arnhem, leaving behind the castle’s wrought-iron weather vanes and a painted ceiling in the south-west wing.

Today the former main residence houses Hamminkeln’s registry office, an artists’ studio centre and a restaurant. The ground floor still shows its original painted wooden ceiling from the late 17th century, adorned with floral baroque motifs and the coats of arms of Alexander von Spaen and his first wife. Visitors enter across a ten-step flight of stairs to the former main portal, while the moat and brick walls frame views of the flat surrounding countryside.