Bagijnhof (Bagijn courtyard)

Bagijnhof (Bagijn courtyard) Review

The city sided with the (Protestant) Dutch rebels during the Eighty Years' War, and when the (Catholic) Spanish were driven out in 1572, the city reverted to Protestantism, leaving many Catholic communities in dire straits. One group of women was permitted to stay and practice their religion, but according to a new law, their place of worship had to be very modest: a drab exterior in the Bagijnhof, a weather-beaten 13th-century Gothic gate on the Oude Delft, just north of the Lambert van Meerten Museum, hides their sumptuously Baroque church.