Haus Bodelschwingh

Haus Bodelschwingh stands in Dortmund’s Bodelschwingh district, within the Mengede borough, as a moated castle. A manor house and forecourt each sit behind water, surrounded by a landscape park crossed by the A45 motorway. Whitewashed brick and stone walls preserve a Renaissance appearance, with corner rustication and two storeys.

The site reaches back to a farm first mentioned around 1220, while a deed records it in 1302. Wennemar II von Bodelschwingh transformed the estate into a moated castle during the sixteenth century. The present form took shape largely in the seventeenth century, after the original two-room house expanded. Eduard Petzold redesigned the park in the late nineteenth century, and the Innhausen and Knyphausen family still owns it.

A massive square tower marks the forecourt and may be the estate’s oldest structure. At the junction of the wings, a slender polygonal gate tower rises beneath a pointed octagonal roof. Inside, a spiral staircase climbs through the tower, while the private manor house remains closed to regular public visits.