Confessions of a Castleholic

"Dear Castleholic, don't all castles just simply blend together once you have visited 50 or 100?" - That's a question I get occasionally asked. My answer: No. While Schloss Hülsede may be the 10th or 20th castle in the Weser-Renaissance style I've visited , does it look like the others to you? Each and every one of the castles out there has its own history and while there may be similarities, castles never look exactly the same. The history of today's Wasserschloss , or moated castle, dates back to the year 1529 when a previous building on the same site was removed in favour of a small fortified castle today forming the front part of the left wing.  The man behind the new castle was Claus von Rottorp, whose family had been given the estate as a fiefdom by the Counts of Schaumburg some 200 years earlier. The famous military leader expanded the original structure into a four-winged castle over the following decades with construction lasting until 1548. O...