Kasteel van Wijnendale in Torhout

You're standing at Wijnendale Castle, a moated castle tucked into the woods, about three kilometres outside the town of Torhout. Look first at the water around the walls, then at the two tall towers on either side. It all looks wonderfully medieval, but that's mostly an illusion. What you see is largely a nineteenth-century dream of the Middle Ages. In 1877, Joseph Louis Matthieu asked the Brussels architect Felix Laureys to turn the place into this romantic water castle. The gatehouse was torn down and rebuilt with a tough, military look. Only part of the north wing genuinely dates from the fifteenth century.