The resident history of four centuries is no longer the starting point for the presentation; Amerongen Castle now chooses to present the different centuries as separate periods in succession.

The gift of Greenaway and Boddeke to unlock cultural heritage in an innovative and fascinating way with an exciting game between fact and fiction is exactly what Kasteel Amerongen aims for as a new form of presentation.

From the reopening, visitors to Amerongen Castle will experience a day in the 17th century: midsummer day 1680. It is eight years after the disastrous year of 1672 in which Louis XIV ended the Golden Age in the Republic – the disastrous year in which Kasteel Amerongen was also used by the French. was set on fire and razed to the ground.

On the foundations of the old Castle, a new and modern country house rises like a phoenix from the fire. Extraordinary envoy Godard Adriaan van Reede, Lord of Amerongen has been absent from abroad for a long time and the reconstruction is largely led by his wife Margaretha Turnor. Margaretha maintains an intensive correspondence with her husband about the progress of construction and developments in the family. This correspondence is one of the most beautiful surviving from the seventeenth century and gives a fantastic picture of what an exceptionally strong and passionate woman Margaret was in a very exceptional position. Margaretha Turnor is the key figure in the video installation and on this special midsummer day her husband, Godard Adriaan, will pay a short visit to Amerongen.

To experience the life of the castle as an audience, Greenaway and Boddeke bring the residents back in the various rooms with film projections: the noble residents and servants, kitchen assistants and gardeners, housekeepers and midwives, soldiers, children, mistresses, English and German visitors, propagandists, monarchists and republicans. Fascinating scenes will take place against a background of the current political situation: just after the disastrous year of 1672, on the way to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.