Kasteel Selsaete

Wommelgem, Belgium, Belgium

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Kasteel Selsaete, also historically called the Verbrandhof, is a neo‑Flemish Renaissance castle in the centre of Wommelgem, a town east of Antwerp, located at Selsaetenstraat 50 next to the Wommelgheem residential‑care centre.

The landholding originally belonged in the 11th–12th centuries to the Abbey of Saint Michael in Ghent and later passed to private owners, notably the Affaytadi family from 1535; in the mid‑16th century a former fortified farmhouse on the site was rebuilt as a Tuscan‑style castle, but it was severely damaged during the plundering raids of the Dutch general Maarten van Rossum in 1542, which gave the estate its name “Verbrand Hof” (Burnt Farm).

After several centuries of rebuilding and adaptation, the present building was designed in 1897 by architect Jaak (Jakob) Alfons Van der Gucht for Count G. Agie de Selsaete; the new structure is a rectangular castle in a neo‑Flemish Renaissance style, with surviving remains of the old moat and, in the 16th‑century round tower, a neo‑Gothic chapel added in 1875 in the manner of Jean‑Baptiste Bethune.

In the 20th century the castle was used as a home and care institution, and today it houses the offices of Palmyra Brands, an investment company active in the care sector, while the surrounding farm buildings, old stables (now converted into a house) and a 19th‑century farmhouse remain part of the heritage ensemble. The site is private property and not open to visitors, but the castle and its historic farm complex form a distinctive element of the Wommelgem streetscape and a valued monument on the green eastern edge of the Antwerp region.