Valkenburg Castle

Gosewijn I, Lord of Valkenburg, raised the first fortifications in 1115 on the Heunsberg, a spur of the Margraten plateau above the Geul — the only hilltop castle in the Netherlands. That keep stood until 1122, when it was destroyed under siege by the forces of Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor. The castle was rebuilt in stone in the centuries that followed, and was destroyed again in 1329, this time by John III, Duke of Brabant.

The Lords of Valkenburg died out in 1352, and Brabant acquired the Land of Valkenburg by purchase; the castle passed to bailiffs who governed in the dukes' name and maintained its defences. In 1465 it withstood a siege by forces from Liège, repelled by the bailiff Dirk van Pallandt.

During the Eighty Years' War the castle changed hands repeatedly; built before the age of heavy cannon and mortars, its walls could not withstand the new artillery, and Spanish forces left its towers collapsed and its roofs burned. Dutch States troops under the commander Stein van Callenfels captured it for good in 1644 and spent several weeks demolishing its ring walls and stripping towers such as the Wolfstoren, denying Spain any further use of the site.

In 1672, at the start of the Franco-Dutch War, French troops seized Valkenburg on 26 May in their campaign against Maastricht. When Dutch forces recaptured the town on 6 December, they resolved to destroy the castle and town walls so completely that the fortified town could never again threaten Maastricht: the hilltop castle was blown up on the order of stadtholder Willem III — later King of England — and its fortifications dismantled. The ruin left by that demolition is substantially what stands today.

Restoration work in 1937 uncovered a network of passages beneath the castle, cut into the marlstone and connected to the Fluweelengrot, or Velvet Cave, which blockcutters had quarried for building stone. Some tunnels served as escape routes during the castle's sieges and as stores for food; one held a chapel hewn from the rock, where Mass was said daily. During the Second World War the cave sheltered villagers.

The ruin passed through private hands after the French sold it in 1798, before being transferred to a preservation foundation in 1919. The Stichting Kasteel van Valkenburg, established in 1924, has managed the site since, consolidating the ruins in the 1920s and restoring them again in 1953. Listed as a Rijksmonument since 1967 and ranked among the top hundred Dutch cultural monuments, the castle and its cave remain open to visitors, whose entry fees fund its upkeep.