Hidden Catholic Churches in Amsterdam

Michie · Aug 11, 2023

One of our readers, Pieter-Jan van Giersbergen, who is one of the curators at the Our Lord in the Attic Museum has sent in the following article to LAJ at our request. Many readers of LAJ will, of course, be familiar with the English recusants, "priest holes" and hidden private chapels that came about as a result of the persecutions of Catholics during the English Reformation. In the case of Ireland, we tend to think of Mass rocks -- stones in remote locations that served as makeshift altars for the offering of the Mass. However, many may be less familiar with a similar sort of history taking place in parts of Northern Europe, in this instance, specifically Holland, where chapels were disguised within buildings that otherwise looked like regular buildings used for secular purposes. Today we will go over some of this fascinating and under-explored aspect of Catholic liturgical history -- SRT

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by Pieter-Jan van Giersbergen

The building directly left of the middle contains in its attic the clandestine Catholic church Het Hert. The building with the orange accents is the entrance of the museum. Visitors enter the monumental building via an underground passage.

Amongst the many reasons to visit Amsterdam, Catholics should pay extra attention to one particular place of interest. In the oldest part of the city at the Oudezijds Voorburgwal 40 stands the museum of Our Lord in the Attic. Visiting this museum will reveal a typical seventeenth century canal-side house with one surprising feature in the attic: a fully preserved clandestine Catholic church.

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