Kasteel de Haar

De Haar looks medieval and mostly is not. The site held a ruin for centuries until the family that owned it married into money and commissioned Pierre Cuypers, architect of the Rijksmuseum building in Amsterdam, to rebuild the castle from the ground up, work that ran from 1892 to 1912. What he produced is a moated pile of towers, turrets and bridges with carved and painted interiors, and with central heating and electric light built in from the start. The park is part of the design: a village was moved to make room for it, and the grounds hold avenues, water and mature trees on the scale of a landed estate. The scale is the point.

What you actually see

• The exterior and moats - towers, turrets and bridges seen from the approach and from the park.
• The great hall and state rooms - carved timber, painted ceilings and the family collection.
• The park - avenues, ponds and old trees laid out around the castle.
• The formal gardens - the planted sections near the walls, at their best in early summer.

When to go

Spring and summer for the gardens and the roses, though the park stays open through most of the year. The castle interiors close for a period each year when the owners are in residence, so check dates before travelling if the inside matters. Weekends and holidays are much busier, and last entry is early.

Honest expectations

Everything you look at is a bit over a century old, which bothers visitors expecting a genuine medieval castle. Tickets for park and castle are separate and add up quickly for a family. Public transport stops short and leaves a walk of a couple of kilometres. Interior visits follow a one-way route with strict photography rules.

Nearby

Utrecht is twenty minutes east, and the country houses along the Vecht lie to the north.