They said she could swallow a person whole. They said her iron embrace was the last thing traitors ever felt. They were wrong — and the truth is far more disturbing.
In the heart of Ghent, Belgium, rising from the dark waters of the Lieve river like something conjured from a nightmare, stands Gravensteen — the Castle of the Counts. Built in 1180 by Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders, it was designed with one purpose above all others: to inspire fear.
It succeeded.
A Castle Built to Intimidate
Philip had just returned from the Crusades when he ordered Gravensteen's construction. He had seen the great fortresses of the Holy Land — their towering walls, their psychological power over those who approached them. He wanted the same for Flanders.
What he built was a statement in stone. Thick walls. Narrow windows. A moat that reflected the sky like a dark mirror. And inside — a dungeon, a great hall for judgment, and rooms that would, over the centuries, become synonymous with suffering.
For hundreds of years, Gravensteen served as courthouse, prison, and place of execution. Public beheadings were carried out in the courtyard while the citizens of Ghent watched from the walls. Justice, in the medieval sense, was meant to be witnessed.
The Iron Maiden: History's Greatest Lie
Today, Gravensteen's museum displays one of its most famous attractions — an Iron Maiden. A human-shaped iron cabinet lined with spikes, hinged to close around a victim, driving the points into flesh.
Visitors stare at it in horror. Tour guides lower their voices when they describe it.
There is just one problem: it was almost certainly never used.
Historians have long known that the Iron Maiden is largely a myth — a 19th century invention, created to satisfy the Victorian era's obsession with medieval brutality. Most surviving examples, including the one at Gravensteen, are fabrications assembled from unrelated pieces — parts of old armour, reliquaries, and decorative ironwork — cobbled together to create something that looked like a torture device.
The Iron Maiden that supposedly belonged to Elizabeth Báthory? The same story. The legends that placed her inside one, or using one on her victims, emerged centuries after her death, layered onto her story by writers and storytellers who found the truth insufficiently theatrical.
The truth, as it turns out, needed no embellishment.
What They Actually Used
The real torture methods of Gravensteen — and of Báthory's castle — were far less theatrical and far more brutal.
At Gravensteen, prisoners were subjected to strappado — suspended by their wrists tied behind their back, then dropped, dislocating the shoulders. There were thumbscrews. There were leg vices. There was prolonged isolation in cells so small a person could neither stand nor lie flat.
These were not the dramatic, almost artistic instruments of legend. They were efficient. Methodical. Designed not for spectacle but for information — and for breaking a human being as completely as possible.
Báthory's documented crimes were similarly unadorned by gothic theatre. What made them truly horrifying was not the instruments but the scale, the secrecy, and the impunity — the fact that a woman of her power could act for years, in plain sight, while the world looked away.
The Factory in the Towers
Gravensteen's story has one final, strange chapter.
By the 19th century, the castle had fallen into disuse. Rather than demolish it, the city of Ghent did something extraordinary — they converted it into a cotton factory. Workers lived in the towers. Machinery filled the great hall where counts had once passed judgment.
It was only in 1887, when a group of Ghent citizens literally barricaded themselves inside to prevent further alterations, that the castle was saved and restoration began.
Today it stands as it was — or as close as stone and time allow. The courtyard where executions took place is open to the sky. The dungeon is lit by electric light. And the Iron Maiden stands in its glass case, telling a story that never quite happened, in a castle full of stories that did.
At Victorian Velvet, we believe in looking past the myth to find what is truly dark beneath. Our gothic collections are inspired by history's most powerful, most complex, and most unforgettable women — those who defied the stories written about them.
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