Amsterdam day trip: Van Brederode castle

by Sean McLachlan on


Amsterdam has plenty of day trip opportunities. Smaller cities such as Delft are a short train ride away and the pretty countryside has many historic attractions.

Ruïne van Brederode is a castle in the town of Santpoort Zuid, about 25 minutes away by train from Centraal Station. From the Santpoort Zuid station, signs lead through quiet, tree-lined streets to the castle. The fifteen-minute walk is relaxing after the craziness of the big city.

Soon the castle comes into view. Ruïne van Brederode has a long history and has been through a lot over the years. The earliest known castle on this spot was built by William I, Lord of Brederode, starting around 1282. It guarded a narrow strip of land that connected the Dutch mainland to West Friesland. A map in the gallery to this post shows the site’s strategic importance.

The castle was besieged, taken, and destroyed in 1351 but was soon rebuilt, only to be set on fire by Spanish troops in 1573. By then the age of artillery was well underway and this type of castle was no longer militarily useful. The ruins were allowed to slowly crumble until they were restored in the nineteenth century.

%Gallery-140254%I was shown around by the caretaker, who lives in a small cottage next door. The castle grounds were quiet and we had the place almost to ourselves. There’s much to explore, including a large central tower that provides a splendid view of the rest of the castle and some of the countryside beyond. A small museum shows some of the artifacts dug up on the site, including some early stone cannonballs, perhaps from the siege of 1351, and a bit of stained glass with the boar’s-head crest of the Brederode family. You can even see wax figures of the former lord and lady of the castle, their faces reconstructed from their actual skulls.

The castle was quite modern for its time, with bathrooms in every room and an innovate square design for the main tower. It’s a shame it got so banged up by various armies. Parts of it are only foundations and the caretaker was quick to point out some errors in the nineteenth century reconstruction. Still, it makes for a relaxing and enjoyable day trip from Amsterdam and gets you out a countryside that most visitors miss.

If van Brederode whets your appetite for Dutch castles, also check out Muiderslot.

As I left, the caretaker presented me with bottles of Brederode Blond and Brederode Bruin, a traditional Dutch made in honor of the castle and bearing the boar’s head symbol of the Brederode family. The beer was as enjoyable as the castle and I heartily recommend both!

Don’t miss the rest of my series: Lowdown on the Low Countries.

Coming up next: One luxury and two budget hotels in Amsterdam!

This trip was partially funded by Amsterdam’s Tourism and Congress Bureau and Cool Capitals. All opinions, however, are my own.

Is the Romulus and Remus statue a copy from the Middle Ages?

by Sean McLachlan on


It’s one of the most famous symbols of ancient Rome–the legendary Romulus and Remus suckling from a she-wolf. Legend has it the brothers were born to a Vestal Virgin who had been abducted by the war god Mars. Abandoned, they were raised by a she-wolf. As adults they fought each other. Romulus killed Remus and went on to build Rome. The statue graces Rome’s Capitoline Museum and is photographed by tens of thousands of visitors every year.

But it may date from centuries after Rome fell.

In fact, it may date from the Middle Ages. The bronze wolf has long thought to be Etruscan, an ancient Italian culture that predated the Romans. Modern carbon dating shows it wasn’t made in the 5th century BC but rather the 13th century AD. The babies are known to have been added in the 15th century. The tests on the wolf were conducted five years ago and were shrugged off by the Capitoline Museum as inconclusive.

Now scholars are saying the museum was wrong to dismiss the results and have pointed out that the statue was cast as a single piece, something the Etruscans and Romans couldn’t do with a statue so large. Medieval artisans could. It’s possible the present statue was a copy produced from an earlier statue that was, indeed Etruscan. It’s impossible to say.

The museum is adding this “alternate theory” to its literature, although that doesn’t mean they’re giving up on the Etruscan theory just yet.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The oldest printing press in the world

by Sean McLachlan on

Antwerp has been an important port and center of commerce for centuries. Because of this it has a long history of printing and the elegant mansion/workshop of one of its early printing companies has been turned into a museum

The Museum Plantin-Moretus houses a huge collection, including the oldest printing press in the world. Actually there are two of them, both from about 1600 and complete with all their parts and movable type. The first printing press with movable type in Europe was built by Gutenberg around 1440 and it revolutionized culture by allowing books to be printed en masse instead of handwritten one by one. The Chinese had printing presses more than a thousand years before this, but they used the more cumbersome block printing method.

The invention of movable type had a huge effect on just about everything. Printing presses could soon be found in every major city. They were made of wood, however, and subject to decay, so the two examples from c. 1600 are rare treasures.
The museum has a lot more too. There’s a collection of 25,000 early books and engravings, as well as sumptuous rooms from the original owners, Christoffel Plantin (1520 – 1589) and Jan I Moretus (1543 – 1610). Some of the walls are decorated in gilded leather, using a layer of gold so thin that you can see the texture of the leather underneath. There’s also a beautiful Renaissance courtyard built in the 1620s. The workshops date to about the same time. If you’re interested in books or the history of technology, this museum is well worth a visit.

Don’t miss the rest of my series: Lowdown on the Low Countries.

Coming up next: Luxury accommodation in the heart of Antwerp!

This trip was partially funded by Tourism Antwerp and Cool Capitals. All opinions, however, are my own.

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Medieval pilgrims journeyed deep into Africa, archaeologists discover

by Sean McLachlan on


The Kingdom of Makuria is the quintessential forgotten civilization. Very few people have even heard of it, yet it ruled southern Sudan for hundreds of years and was one of the few kingdoms to defeat the Arabs during their initial expansion in the 7th century AD. Makuria was a Christian kingdom, born out of the collapse of the earlier Christian kingdom of Axum. Makuria survived as a bulwark of Christianity in medieval Africa until it finally collapsed in 1312.

Now excavations of some of its churches at Banganarti and Selib have revealed that this kingdom was a center of pilgrimage, attracting people from as far away as Catalonia, in modern Spain. The 2,300 mile journey from Spain to southern Sudan is a long one even today, but imagine when it had to be done on horseback, walking, and boats powered only by sails and oars. Yet an inscription records that one Catalan named Benesec made the journey almost a thousand years ago, probably to pray for a cure to an illness. “Benesec” was a popular Catalan name in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Another inscription with an accompanying painting shows a Muslim man, Deif Ali, making a pilgrimage to the church to pray for a cure to his blindness. This isn’t as unusual as it might sound. In regions where religions mingle, some people will go to holy places of the other religion. When I covered the Hindu pilgrimage of Kumbh Mela for Reuters back in 2001, I met Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs all coming to be a part of the religious festival.

Makurian artists produced some amazing religious frescoes, like this image of the birth of Jesus, courtesy Wikimedia Commons, and this closeup of St. Anne, also courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Both come from the cathedral of Faras, an important Makurian city.

The churches are in southern Sudan, not the new Republic of South Sudan. The nation of Sudan (the northern one) has many sites of archaeological and historical interest and is a popular destination for adventure travel.

Medieval Islamic manuscripts on display at the Morgan, NYC

by Sean McLachlan on


The Middle Ages produced some amazing works of art. Some of the best are the illuminated manuscripts from the Islamic world.

The above image, courtesy Graham S. Haber and the Morgan Library & Museum shows a woman relaxing after her bath. It was painted in Herat, Afghanistan. In many parts of the medieval Islamic world it was forbidden to create images of living things, but in other regions it was common.

The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City has an extensive collection of these works of art and now they’re on display in an exhibition called Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan. The earliest manuscript in the exhibition is a late-thirteenth century treatise on animals and their uses considered by some experts as one of the most important medieval Islamic manuscripts. There’s also a biography of the poet Rumi, several richly decorated Korans, and illustrations from the story of Majnun and Laila, the Islamic Romeo and Juliet.

There’s even a treatise on demonology, but sadly not a copy of the Necronomicon.

Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan runs from 21 October 2011 to 29 January 2012.