Muiderslot

The man who built this castle died screaming within its very walls... murdered by his own nobles in 1296, twenty knife wounds ending Count Floris V's reign just sixteen years after he erected these imposing brick walls at the mouth of the Vecht River. Standing here on Herengracht, you're gazing at one of the Netherlands' most vengeful castles. Those walls you see rising from the moat aren't the original stones... the entire fortress was demolished in 1300, then rebuilt on this exact 32-by-35-meter footprint seventy years later. Notice how those brick walls are impossibly thick... over five feet in some places, thick enough to hide secret passages that still honeycomb the interior. But here's what transforms this tale from tragedy to triumph: three centuries after that bloody murder, this castle became the unlikely salon of Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, the "Dutch Shakespeare," who lived here for thirty-eight years starting in 1609. Inside these medieval halls, he hosted the brilliant minds of the Dutch Golden Age in what became known as the Muiderkring... the Muider Circle. Cross that drawbridge, and you'll discover room after room where Europe's greatest thinkers once debated poetry and philosophy, their voices still echoing through chambers once stained with royal blood. The very tower where a count met his end became a sanctuary for the arts... proving that even the darkest stones can birth the brightest legacies.