Museum Speelklok is full of instruments that play themselves: music boxes, barrel organs, street organs and clocks that make music without a musician. The museum began in 1956 as an exhibition called Van Speeldoos tot Pierement, and found a permanent home only decades later.
That home is the , and this is where the real story sits. The church went up around the year one thousand and served the ordinary citizens of Utrecht, while the other churches in the city belonged to the clergy. A people's church got a people's use: in the sixteenth century traffic drove straight through the building, and during the French occupation it served as a hay store, a bakery and a stable.
In the middle of all that noise sat . In 1457 she paid to have herself walled into a cell on the Choorstraat side. She wore no shoes, ate no meat and no dairy, and stayed there for 57 years, until her death in the summer of 1514. When she died, every bell in the was rung. A memorial stone in the Choorstraat marks the spot.
Since 1984, music that plays itself has filled the same space.
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Sources. Story: Museum Speelklok, 'Museum Speelklok celebrates 40 years in Utrecht's Buurkerk' and 'At home in the Buurkerk' (museumspeelklok.nl); Utrechts Klokkenluiders Gilde, Buurkerk page (klokkenluiders.nl); DUIC, articles on Suster Bertken; Wikipedia, Suster Bertken (second source). Photos: Source photo: Door Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24260778
