Qualla: Aalholm

Aalholm: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Erik Damskier 20:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC), Public domain. On 12 August 2012, an auctioneer at a farm on Lolland worked through 181 motor cars in one day. They had been sitting in a closed museum since 2008, a kilometre west of a castle whose north wing was already old when Columbus sailed. The sale realised 76.5 million Danish kroner - roughly 10.2 million euros - and it emptied the strangest thing ever attached to Aalholm. The castle itself is still there, moated and grey-walled at the head of Nysted Nor, waiting out the latest of its many owners.

Read more: Aalholm on Qualla

Image: Erik Damskier 20:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC) | Public domain

Aalholm: A King's Pawn

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hubertus45, CC BY-SA 3.0. Aalholm enters the written record in 1329, and not in a flattering way: King Christopher II pawned it to Count John the Mild, one of a string of humiliations in a reign spent mortgaging Denmark piece by piece. The castle was almost certainly older, probably raised around 1200 as ...

Read more: Aalholm on Qualla

Image: Hubertus45 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aalholm: Spectacles Made of Stone

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Erik Damskier assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. No written source describes the first castle, and whatever archaeology survives lies buried under the present building. What can be dated is the north wing, thought to be 14th- and 15th-century work. After that the documentation becomes abundant, and much of it is about decay. In...

Read more: Aalholm on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Erik Damskier assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Aalholm: Emerentia's Countship

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Erik Damskier, Public domain. In 1725 Frederik IV sold Aalholm for 95,000 rigsdaler to Emerentia von Levetzow, widow of Johan Otto Raben, who went on to become one of the largest landowners on Lolland. Nine years later, by testament, she created the countship of Christiansholm for her grandson Christian Raben...

Read more: Aalholm on Qualla

Image: Erik Damskier | Public domain

Aalholm: Two Hundred and Twenty-Four Cars

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Toxophilus, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1964 the Raben-Levetzau family opened something odder than a manor house tour: a veteran car museum in the outbuildings of Stubberup Farm, about a kilometre west of the castle. The castle itself followed in the 1970s, when parts of it opened to visitors as a manor house museum...

Read more: Aalholm on Qualla

Image: Toxophilus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Aalholm: The Water Comes Back

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Sir48 assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The landscape around Aalholm has been rearranged almost as often as the building. An S-shaped causeway ran to the castle from Søstræde and Slotsgade in Nysted, probably from the beginning. A small garden appeared on the west side in 1796; a park was laid out in Hestehave Woods in...

Read more: Aalholm on Qualla

Image: No machine-readable author provided. Sir48 assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0