Kasteel Rechteren — the room no one opens

OVERVIEW

Kasteel Rechteren stands on an island in a dead arm of the Overijsselse Vecht, reached by a stone arched bridge, in the hamlet of Rechteren in the municipality of Dalfsen. It is the only medieval castle in the province of Overijssel to have survived complete. It has walls metres thick and more than forty rooms and halls, and its round donjon is 33 m high.

HISTORY

Until the early 14th century the castle belonged to the counts of Bentheim. In 1315 it passed for a time to Herman van Voorst and then by inheritance to the Van Heeckerens, who came to call themselves Van Rechteren; the family still owns it and descendants still live there. Prince Maurits had it dismantled in 1591 so that the Spanish could not take a strong fortress: the curtain wall was pulled down, the ramparts dug away and the main moat filled. The donjon was raised by two storeys in the 15th century, the house remodelled in neo-Gothic style in 1896, and that work undone in 1953–1957. From 1943 to 1945 it sheltered about sixty evacuees, mainly from Katwijk, Noordwijk and Scheveningen.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The family allowed a photographer to record the interior in 1908 and 1991, which is how its rooms are known. Among them, the article records, there is said to be a 'spookkamer' — a ghost room — that has not been opened for centuries, because a rabid huntsman was once locked inside it. The Dutch article on witte wieven adds that the count, driving past the estate's farms, would see white mist and say: 'That's just like faces.'

VISITING

The castle, gardens and park are not open to the public; the castle can be seen well from the road between Vilsteren and Dalfsen.