Château de Rixensart

The site is arranged around a southern forecourt and a northern enclosed court that forms the main château, with the former chapel to the west and formal gardens to the east. The principal buildings form a rectangular block of four wings linked by octagonal corner towers, with a prominent tower-porch providing the main entrance from the forecourt. Construction combines a white-stone base with red-brick walls, the brickwork picked out by horizontal white-stone bands and white-stone corner chains.

The approach from the street is marked by a Baroque entrance portal built of red brick and blue stone, its lower composition framed by banded jambs and pilasters and crowned by a volute pediment bearing the Bruay coat of arms; an upper section was added in 1930. This portal opens onto the forecourt, which is flanked by 17th-century service buildings in brick with slate roofs and numerous dormer windows. The right outbuilding has an opening set in ferruginous sandstone jambs that supports a white-stone curved arch with a projecting keystone and is flanked by stone crossbar windows, while the left outbuilding displays windows divided by stone mullions and transoms.

The porch-tower contains a ground-floor blue-stone Baroque doorway set between Tuscan columns that hold a broken volute pediment decorated with the Bruay arms. The tower’s facades show numerous anchor plates and boulins, the holes left from timber scaffolding, immediately under the roof; the roof itself is a slate spire pierced by dormers and finished with a weather vane. The southern face of this entry tower carries a large sundial at the second-floor level and a substantial wooden and wrought-iron wall clock on the uppermost floor. Several second-floor openings have wooden transoms rather than stone.

Each of the four corner towers is octagonal, set off against the brick walls by white-stone angle chains, and shows boulins beneath its roof. Every tower is roofed with a slate spire pierced by dormers and topped by a small bell-shaped watch turret, a slate ball and a weather vane. The north wing that faces the inner court presents a thirteen-bay balanced frontage dated 1631 by anchor plates; the ten central bays hold large rectangular windows with stone mullions and transoms and painted shutters at the lower level. The outer bays show doors framed in white stone whose jambs curve into harp shapes supporting semicircular arches with projecting keystones, and the central bay contains a small paired white-stone portal with pilasters and a broken pediment bearing the Spinola arms encircled by the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

The other wings open onto arcaded galleries with flattened arches carried on Tuscan columns; anchor plates record the years 1648 for the west wing and 1660 for the east and south wings. To the west of the château a separate blue-stone garden portal gives access to the northern garden. That Baroque gate is set between Tuscan pilasters and an arch with arabesque carving and is surmounted by a curved broken pediment engraved with the Merode coat of arms and the French mottos “Ou serasse Merode ?” (Where will it be Merode?) and “Plus d’honneur que d’honneurs” (More honour than honours).

The former castle chapel that stood to the west of the main court later occupied the site of the removed keep and now serves as the parish church of Sainte-Croix; it entered parish use in 1802 and was enlarged on two occasions during the 1800s. The estate includes formal gardens attributed to the celebrated French garden designer André Le Nôtre. Inside the château the interiors are described as notable and contain several valuable items from the princely collection. The château, its outbuildings and the surrounding park enjoy protected status as historic monuments, and since 15 November 2018 the buildings and grounds have been held by the Fondation Merode-Rixensart.