In the heart of Belgium, a magnificent castle
was built in 1633 by a noble family who left their mark on the history of the place. But
as the years passed, the castle changed hands, and in the 19th century, it was purchased by
the influential British Atkins family, known for their success in the antiques and art business.
The Atkins family had big plans for the castle, hoping to expand their operations into Belgium.
And for a time, they made the castle their home. Christoph Atkins and his sister Marie-Noel grew up
within these walls, surrounded by the grandeur of their family's wealth and success. But
as time passed, their paths diverged. Marie-Noel graduated from
university and yearned for a different life, so she moved to Israel
to pursue her studies of law. Meanwhile, Christoph took over the family business
and expanded upon his father's work. He was a man of many passions and pleasures,
with many lovers and a appetite for travel. He led a lavish lifestyle, traveling the world
for his business and living life to the fullest. But then, in 2017, the castle fell silent.
It was abandoned and left to the elements . The whereabouts of Christoph and
his sister, Marie-Noel, are unknown. What happened to the once-great Atkins family?
What secrets do the abandoned castle's walls hold? Join us as we explore the mysteries
of this forgotten place and uncover the dramatic and intriguing story of
the people who once called it home. [Music] Welcome back, everybody, to the Bros Of Decay.
I'm Lesley, and today, I'm presenting to you a very special place from my home country, Belgium
- a castle from 1633, from the 17th century, with four centuries of history inside of
it. First owned by a noble Belton family, later by the Atkins Family and their art
collections and art dealerships around the world. This is going to be a fantastic exploration, and
I'm going to take you through all the ins and outs of this beautiful, mysterious, and romantic place.
This castle is absolutely massive, and I truly adore the style of it. I would say that I
can compare it with the castles that I've seen before in my home country. I definitely love
the enormous front door that we have over here. You can see the door would open up to let
the people and the guests inside of it. Above there, we even have a
lantern still bungling away. And this is the massive
courtyard surrounding this place. Back in the time, the people would drive in with
the horse and carriages. They would park them in there, and later on, they would come in here with
their cars. The family Atkins that lived here were very rich and very influential and definitely
had a lot of cars that would be stored up here. Wow, I want to give you an overview of this
place before we're going to venture inside of it and show you all the ins and
outs of this wondrous castle. Wow, this outside is absolutely magnificent,
but let's now venture into this place. Over here, everything is completely overgrown
but has formed the sort of entrance into the basement of the castle. I have to be very
careful because everything is loose here. We immediately come into a very beautiful
basement. All the architectural features of this place are immediately present here.
Wow, I feel like I'm truly coming into an ancient Belgian Castle. Over here, we got
a doorway that says "toilette" on the door, so I believe that Gustav, when he had
this Castle when he had the business, he also used this place as a sort of art gallery,
inviting guests over, maybe even letting them sleep here. I don't think it was a hotel in a
time because there is no evidence of that at all, but I definitely think customers came here
for the art galleries and stuff like that. Let's have a look inside of this room. Yeah, I can
immediately see this Castle being built in 1633. Those arches definitely tell the truth. I love
the pillars as well in the middle of the room. I can definitely see from this side, if you
come over here, they are completely made out of marble. You can see the nerves, the white nerves
inside of there. Sometimes you see fake pillars, for example, in the bank in Chicago that I filmed.
I will link that one up here. But in the bank in Chicago, there were massive fake pillars, but of
course, in Europe, they are all real. And as you can see, also this room used to be a toilet, a
very, very primitive one as you can see as well. Okay, let's go further into this basement, and
here we come into some sort of a corridor with the stairway here to the left leading up into
the castle. I don't know what this door is, seems to be locked, but again, I love the two ways
that we have in this place, all made out of marble of this rich stone, as you can see. Very sturdy
and have been standing here for four centuries, and these wooden doors as well
like open and close into the rooms. Welcome inside. I have already looked at this
room, but I believe that this used to be the servant's quarter, where the servants of the
household back in the time used to prepare all the food for the family because back in
1633, a Belgian family built this place, and they were noble. Of course, they had servants,
and the servants would work down here, sleep down here in these corridors, and yeah, this was their
facility. Here in front of us, we have a huge fireplace. Back in the time, there would be stoves
underneath here, cooking spaces and everything. If you come underneath here, you can see the
massive exhauster that we have over here. This is something very unique, but I think I
know what this used to be. So at the end of here, a pot would hang, and then I think they would
push it underneath the fireplace and take it out of the fireplace like this, with this massive
hinge that we have over here. There's a beautiful feature of this fireplace. I've never seen
quite like this before. Oh, here to this side, we can see those stoves that I was talking about.
I don't know if these were exactly the ones that were underneath this fireplace. They definitely
are from somewhere inside of this place. Wow, they're beautiful and completely rusted up. I love this little basement, wine barrels over here as well. It's even more back here. Come have a look. Wow, literally hundreds of dusty
wine bottles left here on the floor. It's always a tradition for castles all around the
world, or especially in Europe, to produce their own wines and definitely also have a wine cellar.
Wine is a noble drink from back in that period. Amazing, and here again, you
can see that arch-style ceiling going back everywhere. This is how they built
these massive structures back in the time. This is how they would support the weight of
a castle. Like we have a foundation nowadays, this is the foundation of the castle. Of course,
there's also a foundation underneath here, but this is what keeps everything above there stable.
Okay, I think it's time now to head upstairs and check out those spaces of the castle because
it's going to be an epic exploration. Let's now make our way into the main section of the
castle, the living space of this household. I'm super excited to show you all the ins and
outs of this wonderful place. Just have a look at the envelope of this place. This wonderful
hallway, just mysteries waiting to be uncovered. But first, I want to take you into this section of
the castle. It's a small doorway to the right side of the stairway that's going to lead us into a
corridor that I just saw in the corner of my eye, and it's absolutely fascinating. Not this
part, this is just a clutter of antiques stacked on top of each other. Kristoff had
an antiques business, an antiques collector, and he has thousands and thousands of pieces
of antiques laying all throughout the house. But no, what I wanted to show you is
this room here to the left side of us. This, to my opinion, is one of the most
extravagant rooms that we see in this entire palace and this entire castle - a room
that you would not expect to be in Belgium. I would give this room a sort of
Italian style and architecture. You can see it from the plasterwork
over here on the wall. They call it the arms room or the weapons room. This is
what it was called inside of this castle, and they call it that way because all the
plasterwork in this room represents ancient armors and weaponry and swords and all kinds of stuff,
and I really love that. It's like a 3D design probably made the beginning that this
castle was constructed. So beautiful, you have this shield over here, and of course,
all the plasterwork on the front, very detailed, and literally every single corner of
this room has been intricately designed, making it one of the most extravagant rooms
in this entire place. I also really love the artwork over here of that castle or the
outside wall of a town, as you can see. It's just magnificent. Here we can see a body armor of a
knight, the swords and spears around it, and up there, even, we have some
bases carved into the ceiling. But it's very sad, and actually a true part
of this place is that after Kristoff left, his place behind, slowly starting to deteriorate.
It's slowly starting to fall apart. They have made efforts to start renovating this place
but have seemingly stopped at some point, never continuing afterward.
There's a handcuffed wooden statue, I think of a
saint, or a priest, or maybe a monk. Yes, it has this typical Belgian robing of the
monasteries where the monks reside. Yeah, they definitely wear something like this. I've
been to a monastery a couple of times in Belgium. And over here, to the right side, we can see the
desk where Kristoff used to perform all his work, where he contacted his clients, wrote his
letters, and all kinds of stuff that he did over here - all kinds of business. His hat still
hanging on the side of the chair, a beautiful antique upholstery chair standing in front of the
desk, and a book still lying open on a rat page. We also have a picture of a man over here,
and I think this person that we're seeing in front of us might be Mr. Kristoff. We have
done extensive research on this person, and we have found that he was a man who left a
luxury lifestyle. He didn't have any children, but he had a lot of lovers all throughout the
castle. We can see love letters from different females that he used to have over
here or that he used to travel with, and that all wrote them letters over the years.
And I will show you those later in the video. Then, here in the corner of the room, we
have a massive wing piano, an absolutely beautiful piece. Let's see if it's still in play. Wow, by the appointment, probably made in
France, but I'm not 100% sure what country this one is made in. You don't see wing
pianos that often in abandoned places, so I'm always very excited to see one whenever I
encounter one. Beautiful piece, as you can see. One more thing here in the corner of the room
that I forgot to mention is this game with these sort of marble balls. I'm not sure what the
origin of this game is. I think it might have been an Asian antique game because he also had
an art collector dealership in Beijing, China, that was also his. So maybe it's an Asian
game. If anybody knows, please let us know. Maybe one of the forefathers of this place.
Here, we can get a glimpse of the outside of the castle, and even more artwork behind
the piano. Over here, you can see this woman, the beautiful crown on her head, presented by Lord
Wakefield of Hector as a gift given in April 1931. You can see there are also musical instruments
carved into the walls or plastered into the walls of this room, and here, they've started
to make efforts to literally save the artwork on the walls. They have made these frames
to hold up the plaster pieces behind it, and over here, you can see it as well. Probably
this piece was falling off the wall, and they made an effort to save it, to save the shield
that's displayed back there. And here, a stud had to be placed to probably keep up the ceiling
because everything is falling to the floor. The first thing I noticed when I walked into this
room was this rocking horse. Of course, I'm now just talking about it, but this is a fascinating
piece. It's a children's toy from back in the 20s, 30s, or 40s. This place is very old and this is
what children used to play with back in the day. We cannot imagine that anymore,
but it's such a wonderful piece of craftsmanship and it must have brought great
joy to the children that lived in this place when Kristoff took over. Unfortunately, no
children after him had left in this place, but before that, he and his sister
probably used to rock on it. I can see behind here a gun barrel of a cannon.
Here are the cannonballs at the bottom of it. I can definitely see why they call it the weapons
room because every single piece of plasterwork that we've seen in this room represents something
related to the army or battle. It's beautiful. A bookcase is completely filled with books
inside. And, of course, because this is a 17th-century castle, we have to have a fireplace.
Here, yet again, you can see that Italian design going back. This fireplace is a typical Italian
piece. Italian marble, Italian design. Of course, it's common to have Italian fireplaces in these
Belgian or French castles, but it's also like we can see that they wanted to represent an Italian
style in this place. A lovely fireplace in front of it and look at this massive bellow right
next to the fireplace over here. I love it. I think back in the time this one didn't use to
be here, so they would light the fire back there. A clock face above the fireplace here is
probably made from marble. As well, there's a piece of plaster or wood that has fallen from
somewhere, but not from wherever it came from. I love the picture that we have over here
as well. This lady looks very fierce, and then, right above there,
at the crown of the fireplace, is this crest. Maybe it used to be a family crest.
I don't know what the family crest of the Atkins family used to be, but this is a wonderful family
crest. It's been displayed up there forever. And one more wooden statue right here of a
religious figure. Literally, like I said before, there are paintings and antiques and beautiful
furnishings left scattered all over this place. Here, a town is depicted, an ancient town
as you can see the castle on the hill. If we start looking through all the rubble
that's left in here, we can find treasures from ancient times. I want to see what that last
room back there is before we go any further over here. Even, we can see things that he had written
down, probably for the business back in the time. Oh, we've come into a small kitchen, a small side
kitchen over here that's attached to the room over there as well. All the food and spices,
the pasta, everything is still left in here. That's so crazy. Wow, all the dishes
are also still left on top of the sink. These places keep amazing me; they keep
baffling my mind every time I visit one. Let's go further into this place and look
throughout this massive envelope, this massive hallway of this place. And I already see something
very cool in the corner of my eye over here. This is a picture, and this man here to the left
definitely resembles the person that we saw in the picture on the desk over in that room. Another
one to the right might be one of his many lovers or perhaps his sister Marie Noel, but I'm not
100% sure yet. We have to figure that out a little bit more throughout this place. Of course,
artworks are throughout this place, everywhere. There's even a little bit
of firewood left down here. Wow, as you can see, the hallway is a very big
mess. This man lived alone, probably also with his lovers, but mostly alone. So he just
stacked antiques on antiques everywhere. And then the wonderful stairway
behind us. Every single castle, of course, needs a grand stairway as you can see, leading to the second and third floor of this
place. We will take that later in the video. Here, even walking canes are left in front of
the stairway. He had a grand selection of them, all beautifully carved, all
unique pieces made from wood. That's incredible, and this leads us into
another amazing room inside of this place, the grand hall, the grand dining
hall where guests would be invited, where dinner parties would be given. Absolutely
incredible room inside of this place. And even the fireplace over here,
magnificent, grand, and elegant. I start over here to the side. We have a
small desk in the corner of this room here, probably for somebody to sit at. Yes, look at
this. Some documents left behind. We have Mr. Christian Kristoff Sean Chilberger. This is the
owner of the place, born in 1952, and he was the man who ran this castle until 2017 when it got
abandoned. He even has a Post Office Savings Bank over here from Christopher Atkins. Wow, a couple
of letters are also still left here. Look at that, everybody. Multiple pictures of the family here.
We can see Christoph with some ladies together. A couple of the same pictures here again.
We see him with the same woman. This might have been Marie Noel, his sister. Then,
wow, so many pictures left in this place. That's wonderful to see. And then again, the
grand fireplace, wow, grand overlook of it again with that marble surrounding it, that marble
fireplace, and then a brick stone inside of it. And look at the grass in the middle
of here. It says 1633 on there, carved in the ironwork. That's the build
date of this castle, so this plate that used to be in the castle is as old as the
castle itself. Wow, how beautiful this is. And this fireplace here in front of it
definitely has been idle later to the castle, but it's still a very unique piece
in here. Even the coals are still to the right side of it. I didn't know coals
were deadlight; I never actually touched them. Sitting area to this side,
small table in front of it. And then, of course, the grand, grand table here
in the middle of the room where we can see ten chairs still standing around it. Maybe when he
had a big important event, he would invite all his clients over, his business partners, and they
would all have dinner together in this room. It's fascinating as you can see, the plates and the
forks and knives are still standing on the table, but I think that has been set up by photographers. Lovely artworks all over this house. I love the
one, this massive painting behind here depicting a very traditional farming couple, as you can
see standing in front of perhaps their village, beautifully painted, and something that
shouldn't be left in an abandoned castle. Here's a desk again, a couple of bottles of
liquor left here, Campari, Bols, Genever, which is a product of the Netherlands. Then, of course, many books and everything
still left here. I love this comb or this broom or however you would call it, but this
would be together with a sort of dustpan. Even more pictures left here, people
that once used to live in this place. This looks like it might have been
some sort of a family gathering or a wedding, again. Wow, oh, it's
somebody's birthday, maybe even Christoph's. That's incredible. Everybody's
blowing out the candles. That's wonderful. And look at these pictures
that we have over here to the right side. They are all pictures of the castle itself.
Wow, the bridge going over the little creek outside of the place. All the features
of the castle are depicted on here. Wow, all the outbuildings, even the small
chapel that's on the right side of it. That's incredible. This is the courtyard. Here, we got a bunch of Chinese writing.
Of course, Christopher, he had businesses all over the world, so we're going to see this
throughout this place. It has European antiques, so he also has English antiques and Chinese
antiques and Japanese antiques. He traveled all over the world. He was a man who
was constantly traveling, constantly being out there doing business. And it seemed all
throughout this place. It's wonderful, actually. So much influence from all over
the world left in this place. Look at this. Of course, there are even more
pictures left here, and these are of a restoration of some sort. It looks like they're restoring, how
does they may be restoring the castle over here, the castle that we are standing in right now,
because these again are pictures of the castle, but on these pictures, the castle looks in a
way better state than we see it today. It has pixels from everywhere, and you can see I see
here they're restoring parts of this place. Wow, and these pictures are from the year
2000, as you can see, a long time ago. Okay. The flooring is creaking over here, and then the
very large bookcase is still filled with books, still filled with literature that Kristoff
and the people that lived here used to read. The small sitting area over here as well with
a massive painting of a woman and a child. This is something you would see in a museum but not in
an abandoned castle. It's a sin to leave it here. It's a beautiful depiction. These deep people, see if there's any signature
on there. I don't see anything. I also love the upholstered chairs and all
the antiques that we have in this room. It's a little cabinet, this little drawer to the
side. It's one more overlook of this room before we go further. Okay, let's go further throughout
this corridor and see what more we can find. I was looking at this over here,
these small little artworks, and I think they look like they have
been made by children, but who knows, I'm not sure. And here we can see even more
documents written by the business of Mr. Atkins. His hat also still lying here. This looks
like it used to be a hunting hat of some sort, I'm sure. And I was just talking about all
the Asian influence and influence from all over the world, and here already we can see a
Japanese playing cards game lying over here. And now we're going to go through
the messy corridors of this castle because a lot of rooms have been cluttered like
this one with all different kinds of antiques. I love the chandelier hanging here from the
ceiling. It's falling apart, but it's still there. And as you can see, bookcases and anything
you can imagine are lying here. For example, this beautifully upholstered chair was just literally
thrown inside this room. Can you imagine that? I can see a picture made by him,
some kind of an upholstered chair. This reveals that he was an art collector, an art
dealer. Ernest of letters still left in this box, fireplace down here, all
these rocks and everything. So, this place is cluttered, everybody. I don't
even know the exact purpose of what everything needs to be back here, but or what he used to
do exactly in this place because there are so many chairs here. Maybe he had seminars in
here. He was an influential businessman, so definitely something he did in here relating
to his business or to something else. Wow, look at this massive grandfather's clock that we have
standing there in the corner of the room. Wow. I don't even know where to look, but most of the things are not very interesting
inside of this place. Look at this. A wonderful wood-carved cabinet, everything very intricately carved
into this place, into this cabinet. Beautiful lion's head down here.
Let's see if we can open it up. Nothing in there anymore. See, it even has a
little sticker with an inventory number on it. So, that tells us that this probably was from his
business. This was the furniture that he sold. Here we come to a sort of working area of this
place. You can see these turning tables. They are made to make wood, to do woodworking on them. So,
they might have also fixed up furniture in here. This might have been some place in a house or in
the castle to fix furniture. Maybe workers used to work here back in the time. You can see all these
drawers, little side tables stacked up over here, and I also see they all have these little
icons on them, these little stickers depicting what they are and
what they are to the business. Wow, look at this massive deer head that's
hanging here above the door. Whoa. I don't even know, is it an elk or a deer? I'm
not sure what the exact animal is. So, definitely leave that in the comment section.
But it was baffling when I first saw it. Wow. Okay, let's go a little bit further even. Oh,
there's one more thing in this room that I really enjoy. Look at this small car that we have down
here, the wheels, the wooden wheels on there. Wow. Let's go further. Here we come
to the other side of the castle, and there's another massive stairway leading
upstairs. Here, it's an exact representation of the other side of the room. And here again, you
can see that we're trying to restore this place, trying to revive it, but it didn't succeed.
These people had so much money, and they couldn't even make that true. That's just a sign
of how much it costs to renovate such a place. Here we come into another fixing room, I
would say. All the tools and everything is still left in here to fix the furniture, to fix
the antiques, and to maybe make reparations to the castle itself. I don't believe Christoph did any
of this himself. He was too much of a classy man. Too much. He probably didn't want to get his hands
dirty. He had people doing everything for him. All acrylics and coats and furnaces are in
here for all the furnishings that he sold. And one thing that really caught my
attention in this room is definitely this art piece carved into the fireplace
over here. Again, a weapon, a sword left over here. A beautiful Italian
fireplace underneath here as well. Wonderful patriarch, it says on here, and it's
a Belgian-made fireplace. It's made in Herent. That's a place in the Netherlands or Belgium.
I'm not 100% sure. And look inside of this fireplace here as well, the left side. We have
a waffle iron, a typical treat for more country. But this is how they used to make it back in the
time. They would use these very big waffle irons and put them in the fireplace, and that's how
they would make a waffle back in those times. I also love this small-built
toy that's been made here. It's a completely handmade toy, as you can see,
probably from the children that used to live here. Wow. It's beautiful. All the gears and
everything. You can still see how it functions. It's a wonderful thing to be left behind,
even more coals next to the fireplace here. Let's have one more look inside of this room.
It's quite empty, nothing much to see in here. Before I go upstairs, I just found out that
this place also has another basement. We just saw the first basement, but the door was
locked to the other side. And over here, behind here, I saw that there was another little
corridor that leads downstairs. This castle is absolutely massive, and there are literally rooms
and corridors everywhere throughout this place. Look at this stairway leading into a
dungeon, into a basement. I really love going into these basements of a castle because
sometimes they reveal hidden passageways, or wine cellars, or just ancient items
that you wouldn't come across normally. Look at this lock that we have on the door here.
This little... whoa, if I touch it too hard, it will literally break apart. Oh, here we
come into... wow, I feel the breeze coming throughout here. I think it's some sort of a wine
cellar or a food storage place. Back in the time, it must have been very humid in
here. It's still very humid in here. I love the art style ceiling, very
typical building style from that period. The exposed brick leading us through here, these
pipes have been added on later as you can see. Curious where this is going to take us. See on this side, oh what do we have here? I
think back in the period this used to be the wine cellars of the place where all the wine would
be stored. Now there's a lot of furniture here, everywhere. What might have this been? Look at
this doorway that we have in front of us here, and there's a little hole that you can look
through. And the first thing that comes to my mind is that this might have been some sort of a
prison for back in the 1600s. That might have had prisoners inside of this place. It looks like
a small prison cell, don't you agree with me? I'm not 100% sure, but that's what I'm thinking.
Yeah, maybe a prisoner. The people that lived here could lock it up properly, as you can
see there are two ways to lock it up, so there was no chance of escaping out of here.
That's incredible. I think from here you can again jump a little bit outside this place into the
courtyard. Wow, it's now time to head upstairs, up this incredible stairway to the second floor of
this place. And fortunately for us, this stairway has not been covered by construction work, we
can still see the beautiful exposed woodwork over the years that it was built. Oh, there used
to be an animal on the top of the stairway here. Wow, look at the beautiful intricate design. This
one, this is going to lead us to the second floor. It must have been a treat to
walk up here every single day. See a little room to the right side of us here,
it looks like a very small bedroom. Look at this, oh my gosh, halfway to the stairway, we have a
very tiny bedroom. It also looks like a little bit of a modern, simple bedroom, and nothing that has
been used for centuries. But yeah, it's wonderful, in my opinion. Okay, let's go further up, and
here we literally come into a construction zone. As you can see, there are plastic and studs
and everything hanging here, and even the third floor has been sealed over here, but on the other
side we can go to the third floor of this place. They were definitely working
hard trying to fix this place, but they unfortunately stopped at some
point and never continued their work. Here we have another grand room or what used
to be a grand room inside of this place, but unfortunately, all fell apart
and they never got to finish it. The family, the Atkins family, started living here
in the beginning of the 1900s. The forefathers and the father of Christoph and Marie came
to live here, expanded upon the business, and then Christoph took over and made it even more
extravagant than his father and his forefathers had made it. Look at all the furniture
that has been lost inside of this place, it's just crazy. This desk, for
example, is such a wonderful piece, there's an inventory number on it. Then there's a wonderful painting standing right
next to it, a pot of honey, a pipe, and stuff like that. There's even a children's stroller left
in front of it, a beautiful antique stroller. Wow, it would be such a nice decorative
piece for the side of a house. Upholstery chairs are not even the most
extravagant thing in this entire room. This cast iron crest of the family, probably
the first time that they lived here, beautifully made with the horses and the lion.
Wow, another upholstered chair next to it, and then a very, very large sitting corner over
here. I don't know if this would be used regularly or if this was just set up by somebody, but
these chairs look incredibly comfortable. They're definitely not antique chairs, but
they are, however, very beautiful pieces. Wow, is this some sort of an upholstered rocking chair?
Oh, now it's some sort of a reclining chair, I think it is. Can't seem to move it anymore.
It's a beautiful piece of furniture as well. And now we have a couple of grandfather
clocks standing here, even more pieces of furniture to this side, bed frames, mattresses,
everything you can imagine is just lying here. Fireplace with marble. I also really like the
door frames over here and the doors in general. They're a very nice addition to this
house, and they're all the same everywhere. Okay, let's have a look further through
here because I think these upper floors are mostly storage, but there are a couple
of beautiful bars, however, on these upper floors. Wow, look at this big mess of all the
documents of the business. Everything is still left here from the years and centuries that they
operated their antiques collection business. Chandeliers left here, tapestries underneath
the rubble, the desk where they used to work at, all the binders with the documents of
their customers, all still left here. Wow! Something very beautiful in this room is
definitely the fireplace in the middle of it here. A wonderful fireplace with
this marble all around it. Absolutely beautiful. This is by far my
favorite fireplace in the entire house. Right underneath it, we've got
this very special upholstery sofa. When I saw it at first, I was awestruck. It's
just a wonderful piece, everybody, and even this fireplace as well. They have that crest embedded
into the rock cast iron with a crown above it, and a lot of smoke from the years and years
that the chimney has been running here. Look at all the furniture left in this
room. Okay, let's go further throughout this corridor up here. We can see even more
furniture standing everywhere. These chairs and these tables. Kristoff definitely used his
castle not for his family, but for his business. Oh my gosh, there's even still a
bedroom left up here completely intact, still made, the side tables still there, the
drawers still here. Wow. I wouldn't expect such a beautiful bathroom on these upper floors that are
completely cluttered with antiques as we just saw. A side table with a clock placed above there. Couple of statues, sheep hand-cuffed. Oh, I love
this African art piece that we have over here, it's absolutely wonderful. All his clothing, as you can see,
is also still left here to the side. Oh, man's clothing of course. Oh, no, there's
also a couple of women's pieces over here as well. Some comb, some razors, a toothbrush. All of those personal items, all of those
hygiene items or else, they're left here. It's crazy. This might have been their
forefathers, father, the mother of the family, Christoph's parents, Christoph and Marie's
parents. And even more clothing over here as well. There's a lovely little bedroom, in my opinion,
definitely a nice addition to the house. Beautiful! We can see again a lot of plastic leading from room to
room, all in preparation for the big renovations that were taking place inside of here. I
love these little chairs that you would put in front of a bed. You could sit on them in the
morning and change up and put your clothes on. Even more binders with all the information
from the business left here. It says over here "the business" - photos of the business,
probably all photos of all their antique pieces. Small cow and handcuffed cow lying here. Wow, and here we come again to the other
side, but then on the upper floors. Stairway leading through this corridor
over here. I want to have a look on this side of the place.
Seems like it's pretty empty. You can get a view of the back of the castle. This
castle has 500 acres of ground - a massive place lying in the heart of Belgium. Oh, still a lot of stuff here. I
can see some pictures over here. Wow, okay, I have to definitely show you
these. Let me set up the camera for a second. I just saw these pictures and I was all struck by
the beauty of them. There are pictures depicting the life of these people that once lived here,
the Atkins family that travels around the world. You can see over here it's probably somewhere
in the Pyrenees or in Austria or Switzerland. Here we can see these beautiful pictures
with this young lady - absolutely inspiring. And here is a big photo album of the family
from August 1901. You can see the mother of the family standing with the stroller in front
of the house. Wow, these are all pictures from the family who once lived here, the Atkins
Family. This is something that shouldn't be left behind. These pictures are 120 years old. This
small girl is definitely not alive anymore. This is true history from this
family. Look at this woman, an African woman standing with a young child
and a stroller somewhere in a park in 1902. Whenever I see pictures like these, I
have to go through them. I have to show them. Here they are together
in October 1903 on a boat. Isn't that just wonderful? And these pictures
are, in my opinion, pretty high quality. You can see here, this is the child with their
dog, with their pet dog, in 1908 in Cairo, Egypt. These people are, of course, very
wealthy, so they traveled a lot around the world, and they had the money to make these kinds of
photographs. These have probably never been seen by anybody except for the family, and now I'm
showing them to everybody for the first time. Wow, making these pictures was also
a pretty special event for the people because back in those times, photography
was not as common as we have nowadays. Wow. And it goes from, it started in 1902, and now we
are in 1919 and goes further and further. Here we get into the First World War, and here you can
definitely see all the travels that these people made around the world. Another very fascinating
thing I found over here is all these pictures of these ladies. As you can see, this one is naked,
of course, but here we have another picture of a lady. But I also went through all these letters
over here, not all of them, but it's very interesting. Here, for example, his sister Marie
Noël is talking in this letter to her brother Kristoff, and she's asking how he's doing, and if
he's okay, and how his lovers are doing. And then, furthermore, we went through all of these letters,
and it appears that Kristoff was a man with many lovers. He had a lot of women that he met and that
he went out with, and it's just such a funny thing to see over here because literally there are women
writing, and there are women that are mad at him, and the women that are writing, "My, my lover, and
didn't have this and that." And I really love it to see something like that. It's a very
beautiful and interesting thing to see. I've never seen a castle of a lover before, of a
man who had many ladies. He didn't marry anybody, he was just somebody who had a lot of
ladies and enjoyed that in life, yeah. Over here, we can see even another photo
album, but even more pictures of these people. There are literally thousands of
these old pictures left behind over here. So fancy, so beautiful to see. This is Venice
back in the time. Look at this picture down here. This is before tourism, before mass tourism, when
Venice was still very authentic. These people also definitely loved sailing as you can see lots of
sailboats that would travel all over the world. I cannot stop looking at all
these wonderful pictures. This lady with a cat, for example, in
1907. People riding their bicycles. So, there's one last floor in this
place that I haven't covered yet. That's the third floor over here. But one
interesting fact over here, definitely, that you can see that these people were English.
This was the flag from England, the Atkins family. There's also this beautiful vase, unfortunately
broken, still lying here on the stairway to the top floor. Okay, the stairway looks a little
bit crooked, but I'm still gonna attempt going up there. Sometimes I do crazy things.
Looks like an attic space that we're going to, upper floors of this household. Yeah,
definitely, it's an attic space of this place. Oh, these are traditional castle attics. As you
can see here, the chimney comes together and goes out of the building over here. All the windows
are just open and broken over time, and up here, they would also store numerous amounts
of antiques and chairs and furnishings. Let's see what more we can find
on this attic space over here. Wow, all these frames, these bed frames.
I can see accounting desks over here, so many pieces of furniture left behind
in this house. People would literally pay thousands and thousands of euros for
this, and here it's just rotting away. Let's see if there's something more
of interest to discover up here. These attic spaces have probably never
been used, only for storage purposes. Yeah, nothing much except for a
lot of furniture up here. Alright. So, we have just explored this massive place over
here, and we're standing now at the backside of this wondrous castle. One more thing I want
to show you before we go: look at the trenches that are here, dug beside the
castle. Water would run through here, and it would act as a natural
defense for intruders to this place. I truly enjoyed exploring here. I truly enjoyed
the Atkins' story, Kristoff's story that lived here. It was absolutely beautiful to document
and show to the world. If you like this video, please like the video, subscribe to the channel,
or write a comment in the comment section. Also, there's a link in the description for Patreon,
and there you can support the channel and help us travel around the world. With that, all said,
I want to thank you so much for watching this week's video, and I'll see you next week
in another amazing episode. I love you. [Music]
