Prince's castle in scaffolding

From ruins to construction site

The Prince's castle has a long and eventful history. After the retreat of the German occupiers in 1944, who burned down the castle, it fell into disrepair. Today it is a ruin, only the keep or residential tower is still standing and you can visit it as part of the MOT. The Municipality of Grimbergen is the owner and has been carrying out urgent conservation works since 2024 to prevent further decay, but a complete reconstruction of the castle is not possible for various reasons. 

And yet the MOT is going to make an attempt! As a museum, we want to turn the Prinsenkasteel into a historic construction site, where we can experiment with and learn from historical construction techniques and tools. Where possible, we rebuild parts of the castle with late medieval techniques, tools and materials. A long-term work, from which we will learn a lot. 

The ruin is currently unsafe, we have to wait until after the conservation works (2024-2025) before we can really start this ambitious project. Nevertheless we already did a lot of preparatory work in recent years. We had the necessary measurements taken, we built a wooden scaffolding, we made a sawhorse for the crane saw and built hoisting equipment such as the rocking crane and the skid steer. In September 2024, we will create a historic half-timbered construction lodge during the Timber framing internship.