This castle near Brussels, located on a site linked to a famous Belgian beer brewed by monks, has centuries of history

A neoclassical castle outside Brussels with links to Grimbergen beer and King Olav V of Norway is looking for a new owner.

The approximately 21,000-square-foot Chateau Overschie in Grimbergen, Belgium, is about 9 miles north of Brussels and spans more than 10 acres, with a pond, orchard, and century-old trees. The property hit the market in May with Veerle Viérin of Belgium Sotheby's International Realty.

Although the seller, Benjamin Van Oudenhove, declined to share the exact price, he said it was between €7.5 million and €10 million (US$8.03 million and US$10.71 million).

Overschie Castle was completed in 1904, although the property has a much older history. Van Oudenhove, who works in private equity, venture capital and private diplomacy but has built up an archive on the property's history, said that in the 15th century the site was a quarry belonging to the Abbey of Grimbergen.

The abbey's monks built a brewery on the property's water source, which still runs through the site. Van Oudenhove said the current castle even has an 18th-century basement tunnel that leads to the water source.

The site was confiscated from the Grimbergen Monastery during the French Revolution, according to Van Oudenhove's research. In 1803 the property was sold to a merchant who built a large mansion there which was destroyed in 1899. Its replacement, existing today and comprising 15 rooms, a dining room that could seat almost 50 people and a library, was completed early from the 1900s.

This is not the end of its history, as Overschie Castle played a small role in the Second World War.

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“Like many places in occupied Europe at the time, the castle was occupied by the Luftwaffe,” Van Oudenhove said, speaking of the air force of the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.

The castle, located near a private airfield built by the Belgians during the march before the war, served as quarters for German officers after their conquest of the airfield.

“On the day of the liberation of Brussels, it was the Norwegian air force that liberated the castle,” said Van Oudenhove, 50. King Olav V, then Crown Prince of Norway, stayed at the castle, according to Van Oudenhove, as evidenced by a photo of the future king climbing the exterior staircase of Overschie Castle.

Van Oudenhove honors the castle's history in many ways and hopes to find a buyer who will appreciate it as well. He opened the doors to the descendants of the Norwegian servicemen who stayed at Overschie Castle.

“I love connecting the past to the present and it makes me happy to be able to give the descendants of these brave men a real connection to their own family history,” he said.

Van Oudenhove bought the castle in 2013 – for how much, he won’t say – from the noble family that had owned it since the 1850s. He embarked on a historically sensitive restoration, employing traditional craftsmen who used old materials from all over Europe.

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He said that during his tenure at the house, which was his primary residence, he used wood from the property's century-old beech trees felled by storms to update them throughout.

He decorated each of the 15 rooms in a specific style or period with corresponding furniture, he said, from Louis XV to the Empire. He loved to entertain heads of state and foreign dignitaries and made sure they could discover a new room each time.

He declined to name who he had hosted in the house, but said he had hosted events both in the house and at other private venues in Belgium with guests including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, l former Mexican President Vincente Fox and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Van Oudenhove is selling because he had the opportunity to purchase a nearby property with ties to his own family history.

“I thought I would never part with this house, because I put so much of myself into it,” he said. “But Sotheby’s offered me the opportunity to buy another important property, also not so far away, with which I had a family connection… My family worked and lived in this property.”

He said he believed Overschie Castle would be ideally suited to an international businessman due to its proximity to Brussels, its airport and other important international cities.

“In France, there are hundreds of castles, but we are in the middle of nowhere,” he says, “and here, we are right next to the capital of Europe. »