The New Church

This guide to The New Church on Dam Square follows Michiel de Ruyter from an expelled schoolboy working a rope-maker's shop to the naval commander buried beneath its marble monument. It traces the battle off Sicily that wounded him in April 1676, the months his embalmed body spent waiting in the Mediterranean, and the crowds who turned out for his burial in March 1677. Along the way it covers the church's own near-destruction in a 1645 roof fire, and the empty altar de Ruyter's tomb would come to fill.