Château de Wégimont

Soumagne, Belgium, Belgium

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Château de Wégimont is a historic castle in Ayeneux, part of Soumagne near Liège, Wallonia, Belgium, now forming the core of the large provincial Domaine de Wégimont.

The site originally had a small country house that was entrusted to the village and later developed into a Renaissance‑style building, given its characteristic “Mosan Renaissance” appearance by the d’Outremont family, and today the surviving parts are 16th‑ to 17th‑century.

During the Second World War the castle was requisitioned by the Nazis under the name Heim Ardennen and used as one of the SS‑operated Lebensborn maternity homes, where children of German soldiers were born, a dark episode in its history that is still remembered in local guides and information.

A major fire in the night of 24–25 May 1964 destroyed the main part of the château, but the building was not demolished; instead, from 1965 the province of Liège transformed the site into a multi‑purpose leisure and accommodation complex, inaugurated in 1938 as a provincial domain and later expanded, so that the château now houses a centre d’hébergement for groups while the 22‑hectare estate includes heated swimming pools, a mini‑golf, canotage on a lake, fishing ponds, an arboretum, woodlands, a campsite and a cultural gallery, making it one of the main holiday and recreational destinations in the Liège region.