Château du Faing

Chiny, Belgium, Belgium

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Château du Faing is a large neo‑Gothic castle in the village of Jamoigne, part of Chiny in the province of Luxembourg, Wallonia, Belgium, standing near the Semois river at the entrance to the village.

Its origins trace back to a 12th‑century fortress, replaced in the 14th century by a new castle built and later developed by Gilles du Faing, a noble whose family name the castle still bears, and the Faing family held the seat from the 15th century until 1709, when they died out and the building fell into ruin over the following two centuries.

The present castle was completely rebuilt between 1872 and 1880 on the basis of the earlier plans by the architect Pierre Van Kerkhoven for Count Fernand de Loen d’Enschedé, who had already acquired the nearby Orval estate, giving it a three‑winged U‑shaped layout with four circular corner towers, the south‑east tower being particularly prominent and decorated with a clocheton.

In the early 20th century the château was acquired by the Sisters of Mercy from Besançon, who used it as a home for children; during the First World War they nursed hundreds of wounded soldiers, notably from the Battle of Rossignol, and during the Second World War the site became the “Home Reine Elisabeth”, a school for boys, where director Marie Taquet and her husband Émile Taquet hid 87 Jewish children, registering them under false non‑Jewish identities to save them from deportation and the Holocaust.