Breda Castle

(Local Name: Kasteel van Breda) At the north end of the Kasteelplein is Breda Castle (Kasteel van Breda), which first appears in the records in the 12th century. In the 14th century Jan I of Polanen built a new castle, with four corner towers, and a chapel, both of which were several times pulled down and rebuilt. The present castle, the ancestral home of the Counts of Orange-Nassau, was built in 1530 by Count Henry III, tutor and counselor to the Emperor Charles V, and later extended by King (and Stadholder) William III. Henry commissioned Tommaso Vincitore of Bologna to convert the old fortified castle into a handsome modern palace, and while the palace was under construction he lived in an old water-mill which