Scherpenberg Castle

Belgium, Belgium

---

Scherpenberg Castle (Dutch: Kasteel Scherpenberg) is a historic manor house and estate in the hamlet of Nerem, part of the municipality of Tongeren (Borgloon) in Limburg, Belgium, situated on the Dreef close to the natural reserve De Kevie and not far from the Jeker valley and the town of Tongeren.

The site was originally an important feudal lordship dependent on the lordship of Hamal at Rutten, with a medieval castle that in the 16th century was already reduced to a single tower, which survives in the stone understructure of the present west part of the building and is visible on Remacle Le Loup’s drawing as a high central tower.

In 1579 or 1580 Herman Vaes built a new house with barns, stables, a brewery and a pigeon house; the gatehouse and the old parts of the complex date from the first half to the middle of the 17th century, while the main dwelling was said to have been completely burnt down during the French Revolution, which matches its current early‑19th‑century appearance, and a west wing added in that period was demolished in 1956.

Today the building is a long, single manor house with a service building to the northeast and two isolated round turret towers in the park behind it; the gatehouse rises two and a half storeys under a hipped slate roof, and the whole estate is listed as fixed architectural heritage and part of the protected cultural‑historical landscape of the eastern Jeker park, making Scherpenberg a quietly hidden, privately owned monument that can be admired from the paths and viewpoints around De Kevie rather than a fully open tourist castle.