casemates entrance

Inside the Casemates

The tour of the casemates offers an introduction to the Dumoulin Line, a defense line from the 17th to 19th centuries on the northwest side of the old city, with explanations of the above-ground and underground works.

Kazemats tour in and around Bastion Holstein

In the mid-13th century, gunpowder was (re)discovered in Europe. By about 1450, people were aware that creating underground tunnels and placing large amounts of gunpowder under a city wall could cause serious damage to the city's defenses, allowing an attacker to gain access to such a city in this way. By the early 16th century, it was common to dig such mining tunnels, called casemates. 

Wet and dry canals


The increasing use of gunpowder greatly changed the defense and siege of cities. For defense, it was essential to keep the attacker as far as possible from the city walls via "outworks," for example, by flooding the areas in front of the walls (wet moats). In western Maastricht, the hilly landscape was not suitable for the use of water as a means of defense, so a network of dry moats - high fronts - was necessary. 

High Fronts

The Hoge Fronten on the west side of old Maastricht included a network of bastions, lunettes and dry ditches, known as "casemates. Changes in warfare necessitated several major modifications to these casemates. To cut off attackers who dug approach mines, an extensive network of mine galleries or listening tunnels was dug with the aim of identifying and defusing enemy approach mines. 

Line of Dumoulin

After the capture of Maastricht by Louis XIV in 1674, the number of fortifications was significantly increased in the following decades, this required a large garrison. Carel Diederik du Moulin developed a more effective system around 1775, where inundation in the Low Fronts was used more effectively and the fortifications in the High Fronts were better connected. One-third of this so-called Linie van Dumoulin has been preserved and is a unique element of Dutch defense heritage.

Defense system

This tour, is led by experienced guides. After a brief introduction, you will be shown around both above ground and underground in the casemates. In the above-ground high front and get an impression how such a defense system looks like after about 250 years unchanged. In the underground part we will take you to the mine galleries, listening tunnels, communication domes and caponnieres (spaces from which the dry moats were held under fire) etc. in their relation to the above-ground defenses. 

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This is not a final reservation yet, but a request that we will be happy to help you with.

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