Gildehaus Sandstone Quarry

Princely quarry in Romberg near Gildehaus. Located next to the geological open-air museum.
The sandstone quarried here is grayish-orange.Well-known buildings made from Grafschafter sandstone include the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, the theater and the Frauenkirche in Antwerp, the Catholic church in Aarhus and the town hall in Münster. Of course, Bentheim Castle is also built from its own sandstone and is the largest structure built from Bentheim sandstone.This stone is made famous by the mutineer ship Batavia, which sank off the west coast of Australia on June 4, 1629 while on its way to the East Indian colonies of Holland. The Batavia carried as ballast a six-meter-high portal made of Bentheim sandstone made of 137 stone pieces, which was lifted by ship in the 1970s and is now in the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle, Australia. It was intended to be used for the citadel of the port city of Batavia, now Jakarta in Indonesia. After a geoscientific investigation by the Lower Saxony State Office for Soil Research in Hanover, the sandstone could be assigned to the Bentheim rock deposit.An original replica is currently being built in the Bentheim Castle Park.