Arenberg Castle Park

The Arenbergpark is located around the Arenberg Castle. Several buildings, including the St. Lambert's Chapel, the water mill and the agricultural institute, are located in the park. The Dyle meanders through the area, which is largely planted with trees.

At the end of the 16th century, Duke Charles III de Croy (1560-1612) had the Arenberg castle moated, the park built and the drive extended to Leuven. In the right side façade of the Cantine, a memorial stone was built in memory of the construction of the drive to Leuven in 1596.

In the 18th century, when the castle and the park were owned by the Arenberg family, the entire domain was enclosed by a fence wall. The moat around the castle was also filled in. This resulted in a major change to the terrain, which was originally very soggy.

Nevertheless, the structure that Charles III of Croy gave to the landscape around 1600 is still clearly recognizable. The whole of gardens, orchards and outbuildings was then arranged around two main axes, which corresponded to the axes of the castle: an (approximate) north-south drive, from the leprosy Terbank to the Meerdaal forest that served the Croys as a private hunting domain, and an east-west drift, which ran from the Celestine priory, the family mausoleum of the Croys, extended past the new stable buildings to the entrance gate just on the ramparts, opposite the Porte de Namur. The construction of these steep-kilometre-long lanes, bordered with palisades, had forced the duke to make important land purchases and then to carry out major earthworks: hills were excavated – for example, the hill on which the old Romanesque St. Lambert's church stood, which was deconsecrated as a result – and pits and pits were filled in.

In 1771, Duke Charles Marie Raymond of Arenberg had a 'jardin anglois' built of his own design, with the centre of gravity of the picturesque garden being the Yellow House, a pavilion on a hill southeast of the castle, and with many remarkable exotic tree species such as a Lebanon cedar (Cedrus libanii) that was brought from Enghien.

The historical value of the Arenbergpark is formed by its connection with the Arenberg Castle and the other buildings located therein.

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