Royal Château of Ardenne

History

King Leopold I purchased 708 hectares of land called "Terre d'Hardenne et de Férage" on 21 March 1837. The domain, crossed by the Lesse and the Ywoigne, already contained an existing hunting lodge. In 1843 the king had a rock tower built and extended the lodge with two towers. Around the same time he began construction of the Royal Castle of Ciergnon a few kilometers away. Court architect Alphonse Balat completed the building in 1891, and French landscape architect Elie Lainé designed the gardens. Before using it, Leopold II changed his plans and turned the château into a luxury hotel with 140 rooms, aiming to promote tourism to the Ardennes. An annexe designed by Alban Chambon was added in 1897–98, offering each room a bathroom, running water, electric lighting, and a telephone. The hotel gained its own railway station on line 166, the Halte royale d'Ardenne, and Belgium's first golf course was built on the domain. Colonel James North managed the hotel until his death in 1898, after which the Compagnie Internationale des Grands Hotels, a subsidiary of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, took over the lease. Following the dissolution of that company in 1907, Colonel Alexis Mols became the lessee. Operations paused with Leopold II's death in 1909, and the 4,200-hectare domain passed to the Belgian Royal Trust. The hotel reopened in 1912 after Mols founded the Hôtel du Château d'Ardenne à Houyet, which contracted Les Grands Hôtels Belges, led by Georges Marquet, to run it. During World War I, marauding troops—first French, then German—damaged the hotel, and it did not reopen until 1920. The number of rooms expanded to 200 in 1927, and the domain acquired its own airport in 1929.