Dom Church Utrecht

Somewhere in the choir of this cathedral sit two small boxes containing the intestines of Holy Roman Emperors Conrad II and Henry V, both of whom died in Utrecht in the 11th and 12th centuries. Medieval burial customs split a person's remains across multiple sacred sites to multiply divine protection, so Utrecht got the organs. The boxes are still there.

That is the kind of place the Dom Church is: layered, strange, and quietly extraordinary. Step inside and make your way to the Chapel of Bishop Jan van Arkel. On the wall hangs a stone relief from around 1500 showing Saint Anne with Six Saints surrounding her. Every single face has been smashed off, knocked away during the Iconoclasm of 1580. The relief then disappeared under a thick coat of whitewash and was only rediscovered during restoration work in 1919. The damage has never been repaired. You can still identify the figures by what they carry: James the Greater by the scallop shells on his cloak, Catherine of Alexandria by the broken wheel at her feet.

One wealthy canon paid for an altarpiece in the same chapel and made absolutely sure everyone knew it, embedding the Pot family crest both in the floor and in the artwork itself. The iconoclasts smashed the faces. They left the family crest untouched.

Do not skip the courtyard between the church and the tower. It is one of the most peaceful spots in the city, and it exists only because a storm tore the nave down in 1674 and nobody ever bothered to rebuild it.