Kasteel Borgitter

Kinrooi, Belgium, Belgium

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Kasteel Borgitter, locally known as the “Witte Kasteeltje” (White Little Castle), is a rectangular, late‑18th‑century country castle in the north‑western part of Kessenich, near the Dutch village of Neeritter and the municipality of Kinrooi in Belgian Limburg, often called “Borgitter” because of its location on the banks of the Itterbeek.

The site was first mentioned in 1546, and the oldest surviving part is a square corner tower dated to 1610, while the present main building is a classicist, Maasland‑style house founded on oak piles, with a later 19th‑century baroque‑style wing and a water‑mill and rent‑master’s house on the same estate. The castle was originally built by Jan van Waes, drossard of Horn, and later inherited by the Van Waes family; its last Van Waes descendant.

Anna‑Salomé, married into the French nobility, died in Paris in 1794, and her estates were sold to Hendrik Joseph Michiels van Kessenich, a lawyer from Roermond who was later elevated to baron, and through his son Jan Alexander Hubert the castle became part of Belgium after the 1839 separation of the Netherlands and Belgium, thanks to a deliberate shift of the border so that the estate remained on the Belgian side mainly to avoid higher Dutch taxes. 

Today the castle and its park are protected heritage monuments, and the site is privately owned by Peter Hubert Meuser, who has used it as a residence and occasionally as a venue; it is not a public castle museum, but it can be seen from the road and nearby paths, and it is an important landmark in the cultural landscape of Kinrooi and the border region between Belgium and the Netherlands.