Viewing panel at De Bovenkerk
"I am the Bovenkerk of Kampen, the symbol of the city... I have a thousand stories to tell."
Is there anyone among you who has the faintest idea how beautiful I was?
Who can still remember my pomp and splendour?
My foundations are Romanesque, dating from around 1200, but my soul is Gothic.
Deep inside I still feel like a cathedral, the cathedral of Kampen, with my soaring choir full of stained glass, my ring of chapels, frescoes, gargoyles and graceful flying buttresses.
That I tower above everything and everyone is not to outshine others, no, but to reach for God, to be closer to heaven. To catch a glimpse of the Love from which all things were created.
Since the Reformation they have called me Bovenkerk, but I would rather answer to St Nicholas. I was named after him, the ‘patron of all skippers’. Thousands of ships sailed out in his spirit. Like a crowd of children, the city gathered around me. With my own eyes I saw our houses rise in stone and our streets being paved, while Amsterdam was still a swamp, a mud hole.
Ah yes, forgive me, this thought always makes me chuckle a little
Where can you find the Bovenkerk?
Click the map to open the walking route
The soil of Kampen is an open book full of stories.
These archaeological finds are the tangible reminders of daily life in the Hanseatic city. Every object tells part of the story of our ancestors – from their crafts to their trading voyages on the IJssel.
Scroll on and discover the special treasures the city has given up.
Romanesque
Before 1200, a Romanesque predecessor stood on the site of the present Gothic Bovenkerk. A century later it was demolished to make way for the first Gothic Bovenkerk. The foundations of the trefoil-shaped choir of the sizeable Romanesque church were rediscovered during the restoration in the 1950s.
And so the history of the Bovenkerk continues beneath the tombstones that now form the church floor.
Rich sculpture
Seen from the Koornmarktspoort behind us, the Bovenkerk looked like a cathedral in the Middle Ages, with its flying buttresses, balustrades and rich sculpture. Almost nothing of that sculpture on the exterior can still be seen.
But a few fine examples that once adorned the outside of the choir, where you now see round ‘tubes’, have survived.
Famous
Many famous or important residents of Kampen are buried in the Bovenkerk. Only we no longer know exactly where. But for some of them, a plaque recalls that they once found their last resting place in the church. Such as the famous winter painter Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634), also known as the ‘Mute of Kampen’ because he was deaf and mute.
That did not stop him from making many beautiful paintings and drawings of fun on the ice.