Loevestein Castle

Loevestein was built by the knight Dirc Loef of Horne between 1357 and 1368, on the point where the Maas and Waal rivers meet in Gelderland — hence the name, "Loef's stein", Loef's stone house. It began as a plain square brick building, from which Dirc Loef raided river traffic and levied illegal tolls on trading vessels working the rivers below. By 1372 he had lost the castle, which passed to the Counts of Holland and was thereafter run by a castellan on the count's behalf.

On 9 December 1570, soldiers of the rebel Geuzen leader Herman de Ruyter, disguised as monks, seized Loevestein on the orders of William of Orange and killed the Spanish-loyal castellan when he refused to surrender it. Spanish troops sent from 's-Hertogenbosch besieged the castle; after their artillery breached the wall on 19 December, the defenders were overrun, and de Ruyter and eight other men were killed in the fighting, with twelve captured men later put to death as well. According to legend de Ruyter, cornered inside, lit a powder keg to blow himself up with the attacking Spanish, though the story is thought to have grown in the telling to burnish his reputation as a hero.

The Spanish held the castle for a further two years until the Geuzen recovered it, along with Gorinchem, in June 1572. Only afterwards was the old curtain wall capped and replaced: from the summer of 1575, on the orders of William the Silent, earthen ramparts and stone bastions were raised — two, later three, on the north side — along with two moats, an arsenal and barracks, folding Loevestein into the developing Hollandic Water Line. In 1589 a Spanish force under the Duke of Parma tried to take the fortress, by then garrisoned with three hundred men, but was held off by high water in the rivers.

From 1619 Loevestein served as a prison for political prisoners. Its most famous inmate was the jurist, poet and statesman Hugo Grotius (Hugo de Groot), later regarded as a father of international law, who began a life sentence there that year over his part in the religious-policy controversies of the Dutch Republic; Rombout Hogerbeets was imprisoned alongside him. In 1621 Grotius's wife, Maria van Reigersberch, who was staying at the castle, hid him inside a book chest that was regularly carried in and out, and he escaped, later serving ten years as Swedish ambassador to France. Another notable prisoner was the English vice-admiral George Ayscue. Loevestein continued as a state prison until after the Belgian Revolution.

Loevestein remained part of the Dutch Waterline, the defence system that worked by flooding the land south and east of the western provinces, until its military role ended in 1951. The complex was restored between 1925 and 1986 and has held Rijksmonument status since 1971. Today the water castle is run as a museum and function centre.