Exploring Bentheim Castle

Going to see castles is always so much fun, I'm a sucker for old buildings and historical places, especially if it involves the middle ages. Bentheim castle originates from that time and has been renovated a couple times, so there are different building styles all over! Including Renaissance, Gothic and Roman style.

When walking up to the castle we had to walk some ADORABLE roads. Small un-even roads, houses with stairs and hidden corners everywhere. I love it so much when there are little corners and areas, makes it so interesting and mysterious! (no I don't mean the road on this picture underneath lol) Turns out a big part of Germany is covered in them, aswell as a bunch of other countries and I'm just unfortunate to live in the Netherlands in that sense.😹

It was very rainy this particular day so there weren't many people around (my introverted self was celebrating over this fact), so we had all the time in the world to explore this place by ourselves without being bothered. That was literally so nice. The first thing we did upon entering through the two gates we sprinted up the stairs to the top of the outer wall, where we could walk around and see both the scenery of the city on the outside aswell as the courtyard inside. Which looked stunning and the different colours of the autumn trees made it even more beautiful!

The castle is stood upon a hill so we could see over the entire town, aswell as the huge yard that was part of it, fountain and all. We didn't go there though, since the castle took all our interest haha!

We discovered that a building, accessable from the wall, was the tower so we ran up those 293865 wonky steps eagerly to see everything from even higher up and it was so cool! Eventhough it was raining we could see pretty far and the rain actually gave it a nice vibe is what I thought.

Coming down from the tower and wall we went into the housing part of it all, where the rooms were decorated as they allegedly were, when it was still used. The bedroom took my attention for the most part (I mean, there's a four-poster bed, should I say more?)
The carpet in the dining room was a gift from a lady in the Dutch royal family, if I remember correctly, which had beer and wine stains in it from the times it was still used (They couldn't get it out while cleaning it). They turned that part to the back of the room so we couldn't see though, which was a bummer because stuff like that gives it extra realness I think! Oh well. :)

Oh, there was a pit in the tower on the wall (wow such a mouthful), which I forgot to mention, we thought was the water well. Okay, I thought it was. Because it was so deep and there was an entire carpet of coins there as a result from people throwing it there, which they fetch from time to time to use as repair money and stuff. So, turns out it wasn't the well, it was the dungeon! It was SO deep though, too bad I didn't take a picture to show you. I did find the actual thing and the placement was so logical, haha! It's on the side of the courtyard, I pictured the entrance beneath and the well was super deep, so cool how people were able to build that kind of stuff without the equipment we have nowadays.

I took some random pictures throughout the castle which I've inserted below and that concludes today's episode of me wishing I lived years earlier and had such a house for my own :). This time isn't so bad either x. Hope you have a lovely day and until next time!

Thank you for reading my post, you're the best!🍪