In this paper we report about our attempts to rebuild a historical building, ‘Huys Hengelo’, its interior, a farm built next to it and other parts of its environment (including a draw-bridge and a gate) using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). This castle building played an important role in the history of its region. The main issues we deal with in this paper are: the unreliability of available sources − forcing us to show alternatives rather than ‘the building as it was’, the possibility to allow users to make changes and to experiment with different geographies, animations showing how parts of the wooden buildings were constructed during that time, the interface with the user and, as the project started as a student project on the request of some local historians and architects, some of our experiences with the co-operation between them and computer science students and researchers
