Munsterkerk
The Munsterkerk was built at the beginning of the 13th century as a monastery church for the female abbey community of the Roermond Cistercian Order, also known as the 'Trappist Order'. Due to its Late Romanesque architectural style, the Munsterkerk looks very closed from the outside, but the light and open atmosphere you feel when you open the doors of the church will surprise you.
Mausoleum Count Gerard III
The church was also built as a funerary church for Count Gerard III of Gelre. The mausoleum of Count Gerard of Gelre and his wife Margaretha van Brabant is still in the centre of the Munsterkerk, under the dome, and is the oldest tomb in Europe depicting a married couple.
Pierre Cuypers
The Munsterkerk in Roermond, like many religious buildings in Limburg, is inextricably linked to local architect Pierre Cuypers. In fact, the restoration of the church was done by him. 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 radical was the major restoration that lasted from 1863 to 1890. Cuypers' plans were downright controversial at the time: the two octagonal choir towers were replaced by square ones, the baroque bell tower was demolished and parts of the west building were raised into towers. Although Cuypers' plans were executed almost unchanged, the controversy prompted him to leave Roermond in 1865 and move to Amsterdam. From 1959 to 1964, Cuypers' neo-Gothic interior was removed again, but after the 1992 earthquake, the towers were rebuilt according to Cuypers' plans.
When visiting the Munsterkerk, you can ask for an audio tour, where you can be taken past all the special stories while wandering through the church.