Cathedral of Saints Lawrence and Elizabeth in Rotterdam

Brief information

This cathedral’s name changed along with the role of the building. Construction began in 1904 as the parish church of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, and after the Diocese of Rotterdam was established it became a cathedral and received a second dedication to Saint Lawrence, the city’s patron saint.

So the building should be read not only as a church in the pseudo-Romanesque style, but also as a place that later became the main church of the diocese. This turn explains the double name: it is not a random pairing of saints, but the trace of two different stages in the life of one structure.

What to notice first

When looking around, it makes sense to connect three parts of the building with different moments in its history. The facade belongs to the first phase of construction in 1906-1908: it was with this that the church began to take on a finished appearance. The two towers appeared later, in 1920-1922, after a pause caused by the First World War; they can be seen as an addition that completed the original design.

A separate detail is the side nave. It was badly damaged in the 1944 air raid and was repaired after the war, so the side part of the cathedral is connected not with construction, but with restoration. Another key to the building’s form is the model chosen by the architect Buskens: he took Wartburg Castle in Thuringia as his reference. This helps one see the cathedral as a church whose appearance deliberately uses the image of a medieval fortress.