Château Alensberg

Plombières, Belgium, Belgium

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Château d’Alensberg (also called Château-ferme d’Alensberg) is a historic castle-estate in the village of Moresnet, part of the municipality of Plombières in Liège province, Wallonia, Belgium, originally built around the middle of the 15th century, roughly 1467, by a man known as Jean d’Alensberg, who was involved in the local exploitation of calamine and zinc mining associated with the Vieille Montagne.

The site was a feudal lordship and one of the six land seigneuries of old Moresnet, probably linked to the Cathedral Chapter of Notre-Dame in Aachen rather than to the feudal court of Limburg, and over the centuries it belonged for long periods to families such as the Dobbelstein and later the de Straeten, de la Saulx, and in the 19th century to the Cockerill and Suermondt industrial families of Aachen, who made some transformations considered to be of poor taste in comparison with the original character of the building.

The original complex at its height consisted of a substantial fortified manor with a high square keep (donjon) and various buildings, including at least two farmhouses, one of which dates from the 17th century, forming a castle–farm ensemble typical of the region, with the keep built of sandstone rubble and pierced by small openings, rising to five storeys, and surrounded by a large park.

The estate suffered repeatedly during wars and occupations, was plundered multiple times, and in September 1944, while the area was incorporated into Germany during the Second World War, German retreating forces detonated several supports of the nearby railway viaduct on the Gueule valley, whose explosions heavily damaged the castle’s roofs and shattered all its windows, leaving the building in such a ruinous state that its owner decided in 1946 to demolish almost everything except the medieval keep, which was later restored and whose original four-sided roof was replaced in 1947 by a flat platform.