Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder, Amsterdam

Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder is a canal house whose upper storeys conceal a Catholic house church, now preserved as a museum. The building dates from 1630, and between 1661 and 1663 its top three floors were transformed for worship. That unusual arrangement made it a schuilkerk, a clandestine place where Catholics and other dissenters could gather when public services were unavailable to them.

Look at the plain canal-house frontage on Oudezijds Voorburgwal: behind this modest exterior, the church occupies the full depth of the attic spaces, extending into the small adjoining house in Heintje Hoekssteeg. Its entrance was through the neighbouring alley, rather than through the main house frontage. The interior includes domestic rooms, a chapel dedicated to Mary, a confessional, and a seventeenth-century kitchen alongside the church.

After a larger Saint Nicholas Church opened, worship here ended as its regular function, and the building opened to visitors on 28 April 1888. It is now Amsterdam’s second-oldest museum, welcoming about 85,000 visitors each year. The result is a striking collision of home and sanctuary: an ordinary-looking canal house holding a complete hidden church above it.