Basilica of Our Lady, Star of the Sea

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Christians may have prayed on this spot beside the Maas since the fifth century, making it perhaps the oldest church site in the Netherlands, with two great stones of the Roman fort still visible in its base. The church that stands today was begun at the end of the tenth century by Prince-Bishop Balderic of Liège, and its massive westwork, a dark, nearly windowless wall of stone flanked by twin turrets, still rises over the square like a fortress of faith, while inside the Romanesque gloom, carved capitals, and centuries-old murals let you experience the space much as pilgrims did eight hundred years ago. Maastricht's love, though, belongs to a gentle fifteenth-century wooden statue: Our Lady, Star of the Sea, the Sterre der Zee, robed in fine vestments in her Gothic chapel by the entrance, where hundreds of candles burn every day of the year. The locals simply call the whole basilica Slevrouwe, Our Lady, and sailors' prayers to the Star of the Sea have never stopped in this city far from any ocean.