Castle Sélys-Longchamps

Waremme, Belgium, Belgium

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Castle Sélys‑Longchamps (also called Château de Sélys‑Longchamps or Château de Longchamps) is a landmark 19th‑century Empire‑style château located in the village of Longchamps, part of the municipality of Waremme in the Liège Province of Wallonia, Belgium.

The estate’s origins go back to the 15th century, when Fastre de la Neuville, known as “de Longchamps,” first owned the domain and held the lordship until the marriage of Anne‑Françoise de Longchamps to Charles de Fabritius in the 17th century; the property then passed to the Sélys family through the marriage of their daughter Marie‑Catherine de Fabritius to Walthère de Sélys in 1700, and had been the hereditary seat of the Sélys‑Longchamps family for centuries before the present castle was built.

In the early 19th century, Michel‑Laurent de Sélys Longchamps, a prominent figure who served as mayor of Liège under the French and later regimes, and his wife Marie‑Denise Gandolphe, a Parisian art lover, commissioned a completely new château between 1805 and 1810; the Parisian architect Aimé Dubois designed it in a pure First Empire style, so rare in Belgium that it is considered one of the finest Empire houses in Wallonia, and the existing building was harmoniously integrated with the old Renaissance structures and the 17th‑century chapel.