They Doth Protest

Gravensteen sits between two branches of the Lys, in the middle of the Belgian city of Ghent. Philip of Alsace, a crusader and the Count of Flanders, built the castle toward the end of the twelfth century, on the site of earlier fortifications going back to the time of Arnulf the Great. With a name that means “count’s stone” or “castle of the counts,” Gravensteen has all the expected trappings of a medieval citadel: a moat, a gatehouse, an imposing keep, and an oval-shaped ring wall with twenty-four bartizans. Of course, there’s also a banquet hall, a dovecote, a set of stables, a bunch of spiral staircases, and a sinister dungeon, complete with various torture devices that make the head spin.

Despite its basement, Gravensteen boasts a certain romance — in the most literary sense. When he was still the abbot of Glastonbury, the future Saint Dunstan spent time in Ghent under the...