Royal destinations: Bouchout Castle

Princess Charlotte of Belgium –
The Solitary Lady of Bouchout Castle

Princess Marie Charlotte Amélie Augustine Victoire Clémentine Léopoldine of Belgium (1840 – 1927) was the only daughter of King Leopold I and Queen Louise of Orléans. She grew up charming everyone around her with her intelligence and elegance. In 1857, she married Archduke Maximilian of Austria, younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph. This made Charlotte the sister-in-law of both Franz Joseph and his world-famous wife, Empress Elisabeth – “Sisi.”

Princess Charlotte of Belgium as a child - Exhibition Louise Marie of Orléans in Namur

In 1864, the couple sailed to Mexico, where they were crowned Emperor and Empress. For a brief time, life sparkled with ceremony and grandeur. But it all ended tragically: in 1867 Maximilian was executed, and Charlotte, heartbroken, suffered a deep mental collapse.

She lived for a while in Italy and at Tervueren, but after a fire destroyed her residence there, she moved in 1879 to Bouchout Castle in Meise. Here she would remain for almost fifty years, behind the castle’s gates, surrounded by her embroidery, watercolours, gramophone, and mementos of Maximilian – including a life-sized figure dressed in his uniform.

Charlotte rarely received visitors, yet even during World War I German troops left her undisturbed, out of respect for her imperial connections. She lived quietly, with the dignity of an empress in exile, until her death from pneumonia on 19 January 1927 at the age of 86. She was buried in the Royal Crypt at Laeken.

In 1938, the Belgian state took over the estate to expand the National Botanic Garden, now the Meise Botanic Garden. Visitors can still admire the castle’s exterior – a romantic moated gem – and the Blue Salon, where a few of Charlotte’s portraits remain. But don’t expect the grand imperial interiors of her day; the inside has lost much of its former splendour and no longer has that “wow” factor.

Still, Bouchout Castle tells the quiet, bittersweet story of a woman who once wore a crown, yet ended her days as the solitary lady of a peaceful Belgian estate.

own pictures taken in 2024 from the Castle of Bouchout.