Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Mary's Chapel (Maria Kapel)
Inside the iron cage on the back wall is an old wood-and-iron chest
that served as a safe for the church's cash and precious documents—
such as those papers granting the power to sell forgiveness. See the
board of keys for the many doors in this huge complex. Notice also
the sarcophagi. Once filled with the “stinking rich,” boxes like this
were buried five deep below the church floor. Such high-density
burying maximized the revenue generated by selling burial spots.
Foucault's Pendulum
In the north transept, a ball on a wire hangs from the ceiling (see
the brass sphere in the far right corner). When set in motion (by a
church tour guide, mostly on Saturdays), it swings across a dial on
the floor, re-creating physicist Léon Foucault's pendulum experi-
ment in Paris in 1851. If it's swinging, stand here patiently and
watch the earth rotate on its axis.
As the pendulum swings steadily back and forth, the earth
rotates counterclockwise underneath it, making the pendulum
appear to rotate clockwise around the dial. The earth rotates once
every 24 hours, of course, but at Haarlem's latitude of 52 degrees,
it makes the pendulum (appear to) sweep 360 degrees every 30
hours, 27 minutes (to knock over the bowling pin). Stand here for
five minutes, and you'll see the earth move one degree.
As the world turns, find several small relief statues (in a niche
on the right-hand wall) with beheaded heads and defaced faces—
victims of the 1566 Iconoclast rampage, when angry Protestant
extremists vandalized Dutch Catholic churches (as this once was).
Model of Church
A hundred times smaller than the church itself, this model still
took a thousand work-hours to build. On the wall, some of the
building materials are displayed: matchsticks, washers, screens,
glue, wire, and paper clips.
• Ten yards farther on, the shallow niche is the...
Dog-Whipper's Chapel
In a sculpted relief
(top of column at left end of chapel, above
eye level), an angry man whips an angry dog while striding over
another angry dog's head. Back when churches served as rainy-day
marketplaces, this man's responsibility was to keep Haarlem's dogs
out of the church.
The Organ
Even silent, this organ impresses. Finished in 1738 by Amsterdam's
Christian Muller, it features a mahogany-colored casing with tin
pipes and gold trim, studded with statues of musicians and an
