Saint Michael

Saint Michael’s Church, the largest baroque church in the Netherlands, was built by the Jesuits around 1650 for Our Lady Immaculate. In the late 18th century it replaced the old parish church in Tiensestraat, of which only the baptismal font remains. Considered one of Leuven’s seven wonders, its ornate façade looks like an outdoor altar. Standing on the city’s highest point, it rises above the town like a stranded ship.

The church is 24 metres high. Its lower 16 metres are richly decorated, showing life on earth, while the upper 8 metres are plain white to represent heaven. Inside are two aisles and five large altars, most of whose marble structures vanished during the French Revolution. A planned dome, meant to match the church’s height, was never built after a supporting pillar began to fail.

The original pulpit can now be found in the Saint Gudula cathedral in Brussels while the baroque pulpit of that cathedral ended up in Saint Michael’s church in Leuven. The allegorical representations of the confessionals and the communion are woodcarvings of exceptional quality. The painting of the northern altar is by Erasmus Quillinus and several artists from Antwerp painted the Calvary (19th century).

The church was expanded with a baptistery that houses the remains of the Jesuit Lessius, a humanist that was consulted by many of his contemporaries (especially traders). At the front, on the right side, is a crypt with twenty tombs from around 1600. Some parts of the attic spaces are only accessible by a perpendicular spirals staircase.

Some of the major works of the church can now be found in the City Museum (M-Museum). At the back of the church stand the sculpture of the ‘wayward’ Saint Michael by contemporary sculptor Ad Wouters. It depicts Saint Michael breaking his sword to forge a plough, thus expressing that ‘war’ is never a solution and that ‘peace’ should always be the main goal. This church is therefore open to peace initiatives of all kinds.

The monumental organ, the largest in Leuven, was built after the Second World War (by Van Loo) to replace an instrument coming from the closed Abbey of Herkenrode. Bombing during the Second World War destroyed the latter.