The country of Luxembourg still seems to me like an undiscovered chest of wonders showing off its beauties that would win every sceptic over. It feels so ridiculous that no one really knows much about it. Castles, ruins, villages, all hidden among the hills surrounded by marvellous nature all around. Like Vianden, a small remote town situated in north-eastern part of the grand duchy, known for its gorgeous castle dominating the valley of the river Our.
Yes indeed, it looks like from a fairytale... However, it was built between the 11th and 14th century on the site of an ancient Roman castellum. The counts of Vianden were expanding it little by little trying to compete in terms of their wealth with the neighbouring House of Luxembourg. During the 16th century it was abandoned most of the time as its owners gained a new title of the House of Nassau-Orange and some new properties as well. In 1564 Prince of Orange, William the Silent as he is often called built in the castle the very first blast furnace in Luxembourg. Still he had to leave it soon because of the revolt against the Spanish king Phillip II. After the war the king confiscated the castle and gave it to Peter Ernst von Mansfield, the governor of Spanish Netherlands (one of his former soldiers – a catholic Bathasar Gérard later put an end to Villiam I of Orange‘s life by shooting him one evening after dinner for what he was sentenced to even by the standards of that time, brutal death: his right hand was burned off with a red-hot iron, his flesh torn from his bones with pincers in six different places, he was quartered and disembowelled alive, his heart was torn from his bosom and flung in his face and, finally, his head was cut off at the end).
Click here to read the rest on Janka's blog, Lady in Black (scroll down for the English version).
No comments:
Post a Comment