De Viron Castle (; ) is a castle in

Dilbeek Dilbeek () is a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Provinces of Belgium, province of Flemish Brabant, in the Flemish region of Belgium. The municipality comprises the villages of Dilbeek proper, Groot-Bijgaarden, Itterbeek (with Sint-A ...

Flemish Brabant Flemish Brabant ( ; ) is a province of Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium. It borders on (clockwise from the North) the Belgian provinces of Antwerp, Limburg, Liège, Walloon Brabant, Hainaut and East Flanders. Flemish Brabant also ...

, Belgium. It has served as the town hall of Dilbeek and offices of the municipality since 1923 and was listed as a

protected monument In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

in 1990.

History

The castle was built in 1863 by

Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar (1811–1880) was a Dutch-born architect and the founder of the Belgian Cluysenaar family of artists and architects. Family Cluysenaar was born in Kampen in the Netherlands as a son of Joannes Kluysenaar and Garideni ...

, and commissioned by the de Viron family, which settled in Dilbeek in 1775. It was built in

Renaissance Revival style Renaissance Revival architecture (sometimes referred to as "Neo-Renaissance") is a group of 19th-century architectural revival styles which were neither Greek Revival nor Gothic Revival but which instead drew inspiration from a wide range of ...

on the ruins of a 14th-century fortification which was destroyed in 1862. One of the medieval towers, the Sint-Alenatoren, can still be seen in the park surrounding the current building. It is named after

Saint Alena Alena, also known as Alène
Accessed 2012-05-10. or Alina,

, who lived in Dilbeek. It became the town hall of Dilbeek in 1923, and was protected as a monument in 1990.

Architecture

The castle counts 12 towers, 52 rooms, 365 windows and 7 staircases. This refers to the Julian Calendar which has 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days and 7 days in a week. The castle lies in a park, with several other buildings of interest: a farm, an ice cellar and a coach house.

References

External links

* {{Castles in Belgium

Viron Viron may refer to: *Viron P. Vaky (1925–2012), American diplomat *an alternative form of Vyronas, a suburb of Athens, Greece *Viron, a fictional city in ''The Book of the Long Sun'' by Gene Wolfe *Viron, a playable race (or their language) in t ...

Dilbeek