Over 400 years of history in one well preserved building complex: that is Fort Liefkenshoek. For many years, it was a States enclave in the Southern Netherlands, which would be excellently maintained as a strategic defence post. The history of the fort is unknown, but the current pattern dates from the first phase of the Eighty Years’ War (1614): a square with four bastions on the corners and two ravelins (elongated triangles in the moat). The fort owes its large semi-circular redan (a raised gun emplacement for canons), the strongly eroded powder magazine and the officers’ building to Napoleon. The toilets were built when the fort served as a quarantine site for sailors and migrants with contagious diseases in the nineteenth century. The bunkers were constructed by the Germans and date from the First World War. In the middle of 2012, the new Experience Centre (Belevingscentrum) opened.
