The bell floor
The imposing central hall or Main Hall is the former courtyard of Castle de Haar. It was roofed over during the restoration (1892 - 1912). The wooden vault, 18 meters high, is richly decorated with gold leaf. Large country houses were also given a Hall around 1900, but a space like this is found nowhere else in the Netherlands: half Gothic cathedral, half luxurious hotel lobby. Everything here revolves around the glory of the Van Zuylen family, as well as the comfort of the guests.
Thirty-four guests were able to sit down to dinner in the regal dining room at Castle de Haar. Hospitality was highly valued by the builder, Baron Etienne: reason why this room is one of the richest and most festive in the entire castle. His son Egmont and his son, Baron Thierry, diligently followed his example. They fête movie stars, artists and fashion icons here. For more than 100 years this dining room has been dining at the same table and in the same manner.
Actually, this is more of a reading or study room than a library: there is only one bookcase, next to the passage to the Knights' Hall. Made in Cuypers' workshops, it contains mostly genealogical and heraldic works. An important treasure from the library, 34 volumes of the first edition of Diderot and D'Alembert's famous 18th-century Encyclopédie, is no longer there. It was part of the auction at Christie's on October 13, 1998, decided upon by Baron Thierry van Zuylen to get the restoration of the castle underway.
"To the most chivalrous of knights," is written above the door from the Main Hall to the Knights' Hall: possibly a reference to the competition between knights at medieval tournaments. In the Knights' Hall, the architect indulged in every possible reference to medieval chivalry and mythical heroes, as ancestors or role models. In the Knights' Hall, guests were welcomed after their arrival with tea, petit fours and sandwiches. In the evening, before and after dinner drinks were served here, especially by gentlemen, with cigars and whiskey sour.
Balls and feasts were part of noble life. Etienne van Zuylen and Hélène de Rothschild loved them; so, according to tradition, they met at a masked ball, where Etienne impressed her dressed as Hercules with a club. In the Ballroom, the decorations are dominated by love and pleasure. And some of the most extraordinary art treasures collected by the Baron and Baroness during their many travels can be seen in this Ballroom.
One wall in this room consists almost entirely of stone carvings. On the left is the Chateau d'Amour, carved from one large piece of limestone by Bernhard van Binnebeke. It symbolizes the love between Etienne van Zuylen and Hélène de Rothschild. The depiction, a knight about to play chess with a princess (note the female watching high from a window), is appropriate. Hélène and Etienne's families saw nothing wrong with their choice of partner: "Roman" and Jewish were opposites. The couple married without consent, in 1887.