HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Schwerinsburg (''Schwerin's castle'') is the biggest of three
castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified ...
s in
Windhoek Windhoek (, , ) is the capital and largest city of Namibia. It is located in central Namibia in the Khomas Highland plateau area, at around above sea level, almost exactly at the country's geographical centre. The population of Windhoek in 2 ...
,
Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ...
. Today it is the private residence of the Italian ambassador in Namibia.


History

During the time of the construction of Alte Feste in 1890 the tower of Schwerinsburg was built by Curt von François, commissioner of
German South-West Africa German South West Africa (german: Deutsch-Südwestafrika) was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915, though Germany did not officially recognise its loss of this territory until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. With a total area of ...
. In 1904
Schutztruppe (, Protection Force) was the official name of the colonial troops in the African territories of the German colonial empire from the late 19th century to 1918. Similar to other colonial armies, the consisted of volunteer European commissioned ...
(the German colonial forces) sold it to architect Wilhelm Sander who converted it into a beer garden and named it ''Sperlingslust'' (lit. "Sparrows' delight"). In 1913 Hans Bogislav Graf von Schwerin, governor of the
Gobabis , nickname = , settlement_type = City , motto = Ex Oriente Lux , image_skyline = Gobabis Namibia aerial.jpg , imagesize = 300px , imag ...
District of German South-West Africa, bought Sperlingslust from Sander and engaged him to convert it into a castle. It was later named ''Schwerinsburg'' after the new owner.


See also

* Heinitzburg * Sanderburg


References

Buildings and structures in Windhoek Castles in Namibia {{Namibia-struct-stub