Vredenburg Castle

You are standing on the roof of a castle. Beneath this square lie the remains of the Vredenburg, and in the bicycle park and the car park below you can still see pieces of it.

Charles the Fifth had it built after he annexed the city, the very takeover you heard about at the guilds. The monastery of the Knights of Saint John on the Catharijneveld was cleared away for it, fifteen hundred men worked on it at the peak, and after a hundred and thirty-two days the garrison could move in. The castle was called Vredeborch, meaning castle of peace, and that peace was to come from holding the people of Utrecht down.

It stood for forty-eight years. After a siege of seven weeks the Spanish garrison surrendered and left with their wives, children, weapons and household goods. The fortress then stood empty for months, because the States of Utrecht were still loyal to the king and would not demolish it without permission from Philip the Second.

On the evening of the second of May 1577 Trijn van Leemput and a group of other women began the work themselves, according to tradition with a blue apron tied to a broomstick as their banner. Official permission only came in August, and it took another four years before nothing of it stood above ground.

We stay right here, because four hundred years later this city had something to celebrate on this very square again.