Vianden Castle

The rocky promontory above the River Our was fortified long before any count claimed it: a Roman castellum stood here in late antiquity, guarding a path of the Great Reims–Cologne road, and an excavation in 1994 unearthed a late-antique tower, dated by the wood scaffolding found on site. The basement of the later castle appears to have served as a Carolingian refuge, and around the year 1000 the first medieval stone castle rose on the spot — a watchtower ringed by an oval defensive wall.

The first Count of Vianden is recorded in 1090, and around 1100 a true residential castle followed, with a square keep, a kitchen, a chapel and living quarters for an aristocratic family. Through the 12th and 13th centuries the counts built with intent: a larger residential tower and a prestigious decagonal chapel, its floor plan dated to 1170; a new two-storey palace of 10 by 13 metres with a sumptuous gallery linking it to the chapel; and in the mid-13th century a remodelling of the whole castle in the Gothic style. These campaigns, partly funded by Frederick III, were a statement — the counts of Vianden, powerful between Rhine, Moselle and Meuse, sought to rival the House of Luxembourg itself. Around 1250 the outer defences were strengthened with the Black Tower, completing one of the largest fortified castles west of the Rhine.

In 1346 the heiress Maria of Vianden married Simon III of Sponheim-Kreuznach, carrying the county to the counts of Sponheim. When Countess Elisabeth died in 1417, Vianden and its castle passed to Engelbert of Nassau, opening an association with the House of Nassau that would last until the French Revolution. But the count's court had gone: the castle became storage, its halls no longer hosted the celebrations of nobles, and outbuildings were pulled down for farmland and craftsmen.

One Nassau prince did take an interest. In 1564 William the Silent, Prince of Orange and Count of Vianden, built the first blast furnace in Luxembourg here — then left in 1566 to lead the Dutch revolt against Philip II of Spain, who confiscated the castle and conferred it on Peter Ernst von Mansfeld, governor of Luxembourg. In 1621 Prince Maurice of Orange-Nassau-Vianden added the Renaissance Nassau Mansion, with its banqueting hall and bedroom, in place of a damaged side wing of the 11th-century keep.

Confiscated during the French Revolution, the castle was handed in 1815 to William I, King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg. In 1820 he sold it at auction to Wenzel Coster, a local alderman, for 3,200 florins — and Coster set about demolishing it for parts, selling off the roof tiles, wooden panelling, doors and windows piece by piece, down to the roof beams and the copper and lead gutters. Public indignation ran so high that in 1827 the king, himself a Count of Vianden, bought the ruin back, but the Belgian Revolution of 1830 consumed his attention and nothing was rebuilt. Visiting in 1871, Victor Hugo wrote that Vianden consisted of two things equally consoling and magnificent — one sombre, a ruin; the other cheerful, a people.

Prince Henry of the Netherlands reconstructed the chapel at his own expense in 1851, giving it a lower roof, and after Adolphe of Nassau-Weilbourg became Grand Duke of Luxembourg in 1890 he charged a German restoration specialist with further work, an effort the First World War brought to a halt.

The old walls saw their last fight under Nazi occupation. On 19 November 1944, in the Battle of Vianden, members of the Luxembourg Resistance ably defended the castle against the Waffen-SS — proof that the medieval fortress still held some military value even under the conditions of modern warfare.

Restoration resumed with the Armoury in 1962, then stalled over questions of ownership until Grand Duke Jean ceded the castle to the Luxembourg state in 1977. Work followed fast: walls, gables and roof from 1978; a new roof for the chapel in 1979, restoring the Gothic appearance lost in a lightning fire of 1667; the Nassau Mansion fully restored in 1981–82 and refurnished as authentically as possible. The main campaigns were completed in 1990, with smaller, scientifically supervised works continuing into the 21st century, and the castle now stands open to visitors year-round.