Fraeylemaborg

Fraeylemaborg at Slochteren is one of the larger surviving Groningen borgen, a moated brick house of medieval origin rebuilt through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with a symmetrical front and side wings, held by the Piccardt and later the Thomassen a Thuessink van der Hoop families and turned into a museum in 1972. The interiors are furnished by period with portraits, furniture and a collection on the House of Orange. Behind it runs an estate park of about twenty-three hectares, laid out first in the formal manner and then reworked in the English landscape style in the nineteenth century, with long avenues, water and old trees, and it is free to walk. The village around it is where the Groningen gas field was discovered in 1959 - the largest in Europe - and the subsidence and induced earthquakes from six decades of extraction have damaged buildings across this region, including historic ones.

What you actually see

• A moated borg - brick, rebuilt through the 1600s and 1700s with a symmetrical front.
• Period interiors - furnished rooms with portraits and an Orange collection.
• A twenty-three-hectare park - formal avenues reworked in the English manner, free.
• The gas field village - Slochteren, where the field was found in 1959.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Closed Mondays and reduced in winter. The house is modest in scale. Earthquake damage from gas extraction affects buildings across the region and repair work is common.

Nearby

Menkemaborg is north; Groningen city is west.