Cathedral of Our Lady
Brabantine Gothic cathedral with a 123-metre tower and four major altarpieces by Rubens.
Work on the cathedral began around 1352 on the site of a smaller Romanesque church and continued for close to two centuries under a succession of master masons including Jan and Pieter Appelmans and the De Waghemakere family. The result is the largest Gothic church in the Low Countries, with seven aisles and an interior some 119 metres long. Only the north tower was finished, rising 123 metres and visible far across the Scheldt plain; the south tower stops at the roofline, and a planned rebuilding of the nave was halted by a fire in 1533.
The church was stripped during the iconoclasm of 1566 and again under French rule in the 1790s, and much of its present furnishing arrived in the nineteenth century. It keeps four large paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, among them The Raising of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross, together with works by Marten de Vos, Otto van Veen and Jacob de Backer. The tower carries a carillon of 49 bells and is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as one of the belfries of Belgium and France.
Highlights
- North tower of 123 metres, a UNESCO-listed belfry
- Rubens altarpieces including The Descent from the Cross
- Seven-aisled Brabantine Gothic interior
- Carillon of 49 bells in the tower
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