Château de Péralta, Protected heritage castle in Angleur, Liège, Belgium.
Château de Péralta is a 14th-century castle in the Angleur district of Liège, formerly called Kinkempois. Its north entrance facade, in Louis XV style, is built of brick and blue stone: nine bays on two levels above a high cellar storey, under gabled roofs with curved dormers, a central dome and a bell turret crowning a clock. A slab in the central bay bears the arms of Guillaume Natalis, abbot of Saint-Laurent, and the date 1682. The oldest intact element is a 16th-century single-arch limestone bridge inscribed "D. Gerard De Zuilre 1535".
Château de Péralta, formerly Kinkempois, is documented from the 14th century as a defensive fort of the prince-bishop of Liège. The abbey of Saint-Laurent bought it on 7 July 1457 and held it until the Principality fell in 1795. A fire destroyed it on 8 December 1885; Lambert Gaspard restored it in 1887, and Joseph Moutschen rebuilt it in 1951 after the 1940 fire and the 1944 bombardments.
The name comes from Désirée de Clérambault, born in the castle in 1845, who took it after her second marriage to the diplomat Marquis Manuel María de Peralta. Since 1995 the building has housed the Centre Culturel Ourthe et Meuse, and every 11 November a ceremony honours the Liège postal workers killed in both world wars at a marble memorial kept inside.
The castle stands in Angleur, in the east of Liège, on the site once called Kinkempois; its moats are fed by the one-kilometre Kinkempois stream flowing down from the Sart Tilman hill. The building now houses the district town hall, a police station and the Ourthe et Meuse cultural centre, so parts are in administrative use. The oldest intact element, a single-arch limestone bridge inscribed "D. Gerard De Zuilre 1535", can be seen outside.
The oldest intact element is a single-arch limestone bridge of 1535, bearing the inscription "D. Gerard De Zuilre 1535" on its keystone. The moats are fed by the Kinkempois stream, which runs only one kilometre from the hill of Sart Tilman.
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