Belgium - Autelbas Castle

I don't know if I ever told you, but my husband is a castle lover. On the first months of our arrival in Luxembourg he found online a map with all the castles in the area and in the past four years we started to cross of the list one castle or even more each weekend. So much so, that now we visit castles with our friends and we go to castles which are more than two hours away from us, because we visited all there was to visit in our area.

Still, from time to time we discover little hidden gems, surprisingly close to us. That was the story with Autelbas Castle.

Autelbas Castle, known to the French speaking people as Château d'Autelbas, is a ruin of a castle which is very close to Arlon, in the province of Luxembourg in Wallonia, in Belgium. I do have to say, that even in ruin, my husband loves castles and we spent a gazillion minutes noticing all the details of it. It would not be a problem, but with this castle I kinda got the feeling that it was private or on someone's property that we were trespassing.

No one came to rush us out and my husband even went inside a yard, which was definitely private to take pictures of a gate. I guess that's passion.

The Autelbas Castle dates back to the 13th century and it was the residence of Autel family. Did I ever told you that in this area there are a lot of castle owners? Even the owner of our house descends from castle owners and his castle was reconstructed and is very close to Arlon, but in Luxembourg. We live close to the "Valley of the seven castles" which are all privately own and if you follow my blog you probably remember our adventures of crossing out all the castles off the list, private or not.

In 1413 the Autelbas Castle was ruined and reconstructed in 1432, only to be burned to the state it has today, in 1983. Because it is technically a ruin, the visits are prohibited and I got the feeling that visitors were unwelcome. There is a farm around the castle, with cows and manure so even if the ruin has its charm, one can't get pass the feeling that the castle is out of touch. Still we took plenty of photos to show to you and who knows, maybe someday the ruin would be consolidated and the park around it will host medieval fests as the other castles in the area.

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Raluca