Rundwanderung durch den Moritz van Nassau Park

You don't expect to find such a beautiful park on the outskirts of Kleve and all thanks to the orange fan Johan Maurits of Nassau Siegen (1609-1679). Of course he was a Van Nassau himself, who was born in Dillenburg. But he was such a big fan of our republic that he fought the Spaniards and ended up as a governor in Brazil. He liked to spend his money on art, but was often on black seed. In love, the man was unhappy, he remained unmarried and childless throughout his life, so he ordered a huge burial monument on his estate. Johan Maurits can rightly be called a true diplomat; he was involved with all kinds of constitutional matters but also with marital matters, while he also had a nose for old things (much stolen from Brazil) and architecture. For example, he had the Mauritshuis built in The Hague (now known as the Museum) and the long straight avenues (which you will also walk through!) are an example for Unter den Linden in Berlin. The landscape that you walk through resembles the dike area around Nijmegen, and it is close together as the crow flies. The view of Kleve is dominated by the Schwanenburg, which had its glory time under Johan Maurits. It is of course much older, but it was in his time that the Kleve grew into a park city, worthy of the population. Johan Maurits was a tolerant man. He admitted Catholics at a time when that was not possible in The Hague, but he was an enlightenment. As usual, the castle suffered enormously during the French occupation and the Second World War, but luckily there is still a lot left and that is mainly thanks to the Schwanenburg Friends Club.