The museum domain of the Verbeke Foundation in Kemzeke in East Flanders is home to a very special hotel: the CasAnus. You sleep in a giant gut and anus.
After French, British and even Russian media have devoted articles to one of the most original hotel rooms in the country, CNN Travel, the travel guide to the famous American news channel, has now discovered the hotel. The CasAnus is in the ranking of the world’s most quirky hotel rooms.
“When it comes to the exterior of the hotel, it does not become more eerie than this,” says CNN Travel about the view of the ‘gut hotel’. This very striking hotel room gets in the list of the company of a room, in a crane, in the harbour of the Frisian Harlingen, a shoemaker’s studio in Copenhagen, a mini-hotel in Bavaria, Germany and a five-star room in a gigantic tower in Prague.
For years, hit abroad
The CasAnus is located in the heart of the Verbeke Foundation, a private art space with an impressive collection of modern and contemporary artworks. The museum, which covers 12 hectares, receives 30 to 35,000 visitors every year. The CasAnus is also a hit abroad for years. It is a piece of polyester artwork by Joep Van Lieshout and represents an enlarged colon with anus.
Both the American news site ‘Huffington Post’ and the British newspapers ‘The Telegraph’ and ‘The Daily Mail’ have devoted articles to the original hotel/artwork. The well-known travel guide Lonely Planet has already given the hotel a mention.
Weekends always full
“We can count on 160 to 200 stays per year”, explains founder Geert Verbeke. “Last week we had French guests. The weekends are always full. Especially French, Dutch people who stop on their way to France, English and of course Belgians who want to spend a night in the gut”, says Verbeke. “In many museums you have to stay away from everything, with us you can stay overnight and you are even alone from 18 o’clock. People appreciate that, as well as the beautiful location of the CasAnus at the pond.”
The CasAnus offers every comfort with a separate bedroom, sitting room and of course a toilet. A night in the ‘gut hotel’ costs 120 euros, including breakfast and museum visit. In the ‘intestinal hotel’, even entire families were staying. “Recently, a couple with three children stayed here after one of the daughters had a tour of the museum with her academy. She had specially asked them to stay here for her birthday.”
