Kessenich Castle

Kessenich Castle is located on the northern edge of the district of the same name in Euskirchen, the district town on the northern edge of the Eifel. The Erft river flows very close to the castle. In its basic features, it is a two-part moated castle.

The castle is first mentioned in a document in 1339, when Otto von Kessenic enfeoffed it to the Margrave of Jülich. The lord of the castle thus bowed to the pressure of the Jülichers, who consistently pushed ahead with the expansion of their territorial power and were able to acquire Euskirchen in 1355. On January 13, 1363, his heir Ludwig von Kessenich sold the property to Reinhart von Binsfeld. The Binsfeld family fell into debt over time, lost other fiefs, but was able to use the castle again without restriction in 1514.

Heinrich von Binsfeld zu Stamge, Lord of Merzenich, Princely Councillor and Marshall since 1575, gave the medieval castle a new form. In 1565 he also became bailiff in Blankenberg. His daughter Elisabeth married Johann Richard Waldbott von Bassenheim in 1586 and brought the castle and her parents' property in Kessenich and Merzenich as an inheritance in 1604.

The next renovation of the castle dates from the 1630s, initiated by the then owner, the imperial and Palatine councillor, Heinrich Waldbott von Bassenheim, who was also bailiff of Nideggen and Jülich. After 1769, the castle belonged to a Baron von Kleist. In 1828, the estate passed into bourgeois ownership. In 1884, J.W. Arnolds acquired the castle, whose descendants still own the castle today.