Though Amsterdam's been known as a tolerant city for many centuries, after the 1578 Protestant Alteratie (Changeover), Roman Catholics fell into disfavor. Forced to worship in secret, they devised ingenious ways of gathering for Sunday services. This museum in the heart of the Red Light District's den of iniquity incorporates the most amazing and best preserved of these clandestine places of worship. The church is in the attic of one of the oldest canal houses you can visit, which was transformed in 1661-63 by wealthy Catholic merchant Jan Hartman to house a church. Worshipers entered by a door on a side street and climbed a narrow flight of stairs to the hidden third-floor church. Seeing a rambling old canal house furnished much as it would have been in the mid-18th century, with heavy oak furniture, Delft tiles, and period paintings, makes a visit of an hour or two here worthwhile by itself.
After Hartman died in 1668, Jan Reynst, a Protestant merchant, bought the house. Reynst planned to rent the attic as storage space, but realized he could make more money charging Catholic worshipers for continued use of their secret church. An 18th-century redecoration created the chapel-size church you see now, with its large baroque altar, religious statuary, pews to seat 150, an 18th-century spinet-size pipe organ, vaulted ceiling, two narrow upper balconies, and a side chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It's still used for services and concerts. Other rooms contain a trove of magnificent religious vessels, like 17th-century monstrances in gold and silver. An hour here should do it.
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