NEW - HISTORY REWRITTEN

This is De Haar castle in Haarzuilens, a village in the Dutch province of Utrecht. Though there are records of a castle at this site dating back to 1391, the current castle is nowhere near as historical as the structure at first glance suggests. As the owning family, the Van Zuylen family gradually became impoverished, it fell into disrepair and ruin after the death of Johan van Zuylen in 1641. Eventually it passed to Etienne Gustave Frédéric Baron van Zuylen van Nyevelt van de Haar in 1890. 3 Years before inheriting the ruins, he had married Baroness Hélène de Rothschild, from the famous banking family, and with her family's financial backing, the couple engaged famed Dutch architect Pierre Cuypers to restore the castle. Cuypers created an idealised vision of a medieval castle, with loads of Gothic influences, in keeping with his usual neo-gothic repertoire, combined with all the then state of the art gadgets for the modern home he could fit in. The work took 20 years. During the 20th century the castle was used by the family only during the month September and it became a much loved party location for the international jet set, playing host to virtually every famous and infamous person from the late forties into the 1990s