Historic architecture in the Netherlands tends to fall into one of two categories, very sturdy, old, brick buildings, exemplified by the many forts and cathedrals that populate the city centrums, or large buildings of “modern gothic” style such as the Rijksmuseum and Amsterdam Centraal, which, from a drone’s-eye-view, would present themselves more akin to doll house ornaments rather than real-life massive structures, housing priceless works of art and state-of-the-art railroad infrastructure, respectively. Kasteel De Haar melds these two styles majestically, and is one of the Netherlands’ architectural prides.
This is not Amsterdam Centraal or the Rijksmuseum, but another example of gothic architecture from Amsterdam.
View of the Kasteel de Haar, to compare the stark differences in architecture. Also note the fabulous moat! Disappointingly, there were no alligators or crocodiles in the moat.
Geographically, the Kasteel lies just northwest of famous the Dom tower (the highest cathedral tower in the Netherlands) within the central province of the Netherlands called Utrecht.
Ashley and I visited Kasteel De Haar “a few weeks ago” (it has been a while since my last blog contribution!). On the way we saw a number of fun things! We biked through a canal town just north of Utrecht where the drempels (speed bumps) on the bike paths along the canals went down and back up twice instead of going up and over a hump. This is another example of a simple and extremely useful Dutch innovation, which may not be appreciated until you regularly spend hours of your day on a bike 😉! It took about 45 minutes overall for us to get there. Just before biking into Breukelen we ran into a wedding, and just being near my roots as a hipster made me nostalgic for an indie-alt-folk-jam-divebar-liveband-chill sessh. It immediately spoke to my soul.
Also, we ran into a dog that was attempting to carry a 7 foot stick through a walk/bike transfer gate in the park, and their owner and other onlookers, including us, humored his efforts for well over five minutes 😆. Prior to arriving at the castle, we biked through a historic Netherlands village, Haar Zuilen (zuilen means “columns”? .. AnyBTW.. we lived on Zuilenstraat 🤨), which sported the classic red and white Utrecht checkers and triangles.
Kasteel De Haar (pronounced “Kastael”) is a recently reconstructed castle, the largest in the Netherlands, and boasts roughly 50 meter high red brick exterior walls, turrets with pointy metallic roofs, and a sufficient number of canals and drawbridges. It is approximately two football fields in total foundation size, and it sits on like over 300 acres from what I could see. As it was a recent construction funded by a Rothschild heiress, it had all of the modern amenities of its time, including hot running water, a fully furnished kitchen, and elevator, and many other novelty appliances and provisions for the late 1890s and 1900s.
Some of these amenities were not even had by the royal family! Inside, we inspected pictures of parties with famous celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor, noted many valuable artifacts and collectors items, such as a genuine suit of armor and a traditional Japanese royal carrying basket, and we were in awe of the copious amount of porcelain and ivory statues and vases.
If there was a Dutch word for the opposite of “gezellig” (roughly cozy/welcoming), Kasteel De Haar would epitomize it!
Even the bed was so rigid, you felt like you were standing up!
Kasteel De Haar’s grand stature and ostentatious (yet classy) interior presents an enticing fantasy of Dutch Royal life, however, the sustainability of such a lifestyle in terms of economics and mental/social grounding is ironically, so not-Dutch!