Like many religious buildings in Limburg, the Munsterkerk in Roermond is inextricably linked to local architect Pierre Cuypers. The Munsterkerk in Roermond was 800 years old in 2020.
This church was built at the beginning of the thirteenth century as a monastery church for the female abbey community of the Roermond Cistercian Order, also known as the 'Trappist Order'. The church was also built as a burial church for Count Gerard III of Gelre.
After nine centuries, you can still find his mausoleum in the center of the Munsterkerk, under the dome. Due to the late Romanesque architectural style, this church seems very closed from the outside, but the light and open atmosphere you feel when you open the doors of the church will surprise you.
When you visit the church, you can ask for an audio tour, where you can let yourself be carried away by all the special stories while wandering through the church. The church is inextricably linked with the name of the well-known Roermond architect Pierre Cuypers, who has many religious buildings in the area to his name.
One of the first assignments in Cuypers' career was the restoration of the choir in the Munsterkerk in 1850, an assignment he carried out together with his brother Henri. More drastic was the major restoration that lasted from 1863 to 1890.
Cuypers' plans were controversial at the time: the two eight-sided choir towers were replaced by square ones, the baroque bell tower was demolished and parts of the west building were raised to towers.
Although Cuypers' plans were carried out almost unchanged, the controversy was reason for him to leave Roermond in 1865 for Amsterdam.
Cuypers' neo-Gothic interior was removed from 1959 to 1964, but after the earthquake in 1992 the towers were rebuilt according to Cuypers' plans.
This text has been automatically translated using an online translation service.
