Walloon Church
The Walloon Church, or Waalse Kerk, began as a Roman Catholic chapel tied to the Sint-Paulusbroederklooster, whose first chapel was built in 1409 and was likely destroyed in the fire of 1452. In 1493 the monastery received permission for a new chapel, and the building was in use by 1496—one of Amsterdam’s oldest surviving churches. After the 1578 Alteratie, the city confiscated the chapel and repurposed it until 1586, when it was offered to the Walloon Reformed refugees: French-speaking Protestants who had fled religious persecution in the Southern Netherlands and France. Inside, two notable burials connect the church to Dutch intellectual life: the painter Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–1670) and the scientist Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680). In the 1870s, Vincent van Gogh visited regularly to hear sermons by his uncle, Johannes Paulus Stricker. …
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