Our Lord in the Attic

A church above a merchant's house

From the street it looks like a tall canal house on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal, one of the oldest streets in the city. Go up through the rooms and you reach a full church in the attic, with an altar, a pulpit, an organ and two tiers of galleries. It has the feel of a real place of worship, not a display.

That contrast is why it is worth the walk. You pass through a family home first, then step into something much larger than the house seems to allow. The museum is also on the edge of the Red Light District, and this is one of the quietest, most thoughtful places in the area.

Why a church was hidden

In 1578 Amsterdam's city government turned Protestant, an event the Dutch call the Alteration. Catholic mass was no longer allowed in public, and the old churches passed to the Reformed congregation. Catholics did not leave. They worshipped in private, in houses and warehouses known as hidden churches, or schuilkerken.

The authorities knew perfectly well. The arrangement worked because the churches stayed out of sight: no steeple, no bell, no church door on the street. That tolerance was uneasy and it never made Catholic worship legal.

This one was built in the 1660s by Jan Hartman, a Catholic merchant. He lived in the house at the front and fitted the church into the attic space of his own house and the two behind it. A priest lived in the building too. Services went on here for more than two centuries, until the large Sint Nicolaaskerk opened near the station in 1887. The old house became a museum the following year.

The same story is told elsewhere in the old centre. The Begijnhof kept a clandestine Catholic chapel behind its walls, and the legend at Café Papeneiland has a secret tunnel to a hidden church.

The house below

Do not rush to the attic. The lower floors show how a well-off Amsterdam family lived in the Golden Age. The reception room, the sael, is kept in the formal style of the period, with a heavy fireplace and a cool, ordered look. There is a kitchen, and there are box beds built into the walls, much smaller than you expect.

The staircases are steep and narrow. They are part of the point. Everyone who came to mass climbed this way, quietly, through a private house.

What to look for

In the church itself, start with the altarpiece. It is a painting of the Baptism of Christ by Jacob de Wit, an 18th-century Amsterdam artist. Then look at the pulpit. It is built so it can be folded away when it is not needed, one of many small details that kept the room flexible and discreet.

Look up, too. The galleries run up along the walls, and you can see how the space was carved out of a roof void that was never meant for this. Notice how little light comes in and how plain the walls are.

On the way out, look at the street again. A short walk away stands Sint Olofskapel, and the wider Red Light District is all around you. This was a Catholic corner of a Protestant city, and from the pavement you would never have known it.