The Château de l'Île is a former castle in

Ostwald Ostwald may refer to: * Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald, the physico-chemist (awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1909) # Ostwald's rule of polymorphism: in general, the least stable polymorph crystallizes first # The Ostwald Process, a synthesis met ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, which is now used as

luxury hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a ref ...

. The present building was built in 1891 by the entrepreneur Léonard Heydt (1829–1901), who also served as the mayor of Ostwald from 1861 until his death. It re-employs elements of a previous castle from the early 17th century, which had probably replaced an even earlier castle (the first mention of a castle in Ostwald dates from the year 1226). The Renaissance elements of the 17th-century castle were integrated into the Neo-Renaissance designs commissioned by Heydt, who called his property by the German name of ''Schloss Inselburg'' (literally: "Castle Fortress-on-the-Island"), since

Alsace Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it had ...

was part of the

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

in 1891. The French name of the castle translates as "Castle of the Island", since the grounds are indeed surrounded by a small lateral arm of the river

Ill ILL may refer to: * ''I Love Lucy'', a landmark American television sitcom * Illorsuit Heliport (location identifier: ILL), a heliport in Illorsuit, Greenland * Institut Laue–Langevin, an internationally financed scientific facility * Interlibrar ...

. In 1918, the castle was bought by the Darbois family and used as a

tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of '' Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and northe ...

factory (''Les thés du château de l'Île'') starting in 1921. It was abandoned in the late 1960s, with the end of the Darbois's business, and stood empty until 1991, when it was bought by Pierre Traversac of the luxury hotel group Les Grandes Étapes Françaises. Traversac added lateral wings in the local

half-timbered Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...

architectural style and the hotel opened in 1994.

Gallery

Ostwald, Château de l'Île (3).jpg, The castle Ostwald, Château de l'Île (2).jpg, Detail of the castle with the completion date 1891 Ostwald, Château de l'Île (7).jpg, Detail of the castle with re-employed Renaissance elements on the left Ostwald, Château de l'Île (6).jpg, Ancient

guard tower A guard tower is any military tower used for guarding an area. These towers are usually operated by military personnel, and are structures built in areas of established control. These include military bases and cities occupied by military forces. ...

in the castle garden

References

Castles in Bas-Rhin Hotels in France 1891 architecture Hotels established in 1994 {{coord, 48, 32, 41, N, 7, 42, 50, E, type:landmark_scale:2000, display=title