Country & Christmas Fair Kasteel de Haar

This castle looks medieval, and partly it is. But most of what you see was built a little over a century ago, with Rothschild money, by the same architect who built the Rijksmuseum.

There has been a castle here since at least 1391. It passed to the Van Zuylen family in 1440, was burned in 1482, and after the last owner died childless in 1641 it slowly fell into ruin. For two hundred years it was a romantic wreck.

In 1887 the heir, Etienne van Zuylen, married Baroness Hélène de Rothschild, of the banking family. Three years later he inherited the ruin, and with her family's money the couple decided to rebuild it. They hired Pierre Cuypers, and work began in 1892. Behind the medieval look it was very modern: electric light from its own generator, and central steam heating.

The rebuilding did not stop at the walls. The old village of Haarzuilens stood in the way of the new park, so it was demolished, except for the church, and rebuilt about a kilometre away in a fairy-tale medieval style. Van Zuylen ordered seven thousand fully grown trees for the park. To get them past the streets of Utrecht, he bought a house that was in the way and pulled it down.

In the Second World War the steward, Hendrik de Greef, kept the castle out of German hands. Since 2000 a foundation looks after it. So this Christmas fair is held in a dream of the Middle Ages, built in the age of electricity.