Belp Castle

Belp Castle in the town of Belp, Switzerland, is a castle whose core dates to the 16th century and whose development took place within the Bernese political sphere. Its fabric shows both early modern building phases and a later Baroque enlargement, and the site served for centuries as the centre of a local lordship before becoming a district administrative centre in the modern period.

The story begins in the late 13th century, when Bernese forces in 1298 captured and sacked the Hohburg on the Belpberg, took control of the lordship of Belp, and compelled the local lord Ulrich von Belp to accept Bernese citizenship and to put up a new dwelling of wood. That timber residence survived until it was taken down in 1783. In 1383 the lordship passed into the hands of Petermann von Wabern, who was based in Bern, and from the 15th into the 17th century ownership was shared at times by the Gruber, vom Stein, von Scharnachthal, von Luternau and Moratel families.

By the early 1500s a stone house stood beside the Gürben stream within an orchard, and the property underwent major transformation in the mid 16th century and again in the 1630s and 1640s. Those campaigns, carried out in 1554 and in 1631–1636 with further work in 1644, added towers and linked buildings so that the original lordly residence acquired the appearance and functions of a castle. In the first half of the 17th century Johann Rudolf Stürler (1597–1665) became sole baron of Belp. In 1720 Karl Emanuel von Wattenwyl bought the barony and castle from Hans Georg von Muralt, and later in the 18th century a late Baroque enlargement united two medieval houses and introduced a developed covered columned walkway, a strong visual centre for the ensemble.

Lordship rights lapsed in 1798, and in 1810 Salomon Albert Karl von Wattenwyl sold the castle and the associated lordship to the Canton of Bern. The canton established the building as the administrative office for the newly created Seftigen district, and the castle served in that administrative and judicial role until 31 December 2009, housing the government representative’s office, the courts of Judicial District IX Schwarzenburg‑Seftigen, a branch of the district land registry, and the debt enforcement and bankruptcy office. The municipality of Belp purchased the property in June 2012. In summer 2014 the regional music school moved into partly renovated spaces for its administration and rehearsal and concert rooms, the former courtroom began to be used for representative events, and the culture commission together with the local museum began to use rooms for annual special exhibitions. In spring 2019 a public telephone booth in the castle garden was converted into a book‑exchange operated by the municipal library. The main building is listed in the cantonal building inventory as the principal element of the monument known as the Old Castle.