Oudenbosch Travel Guide

The Institute of St. Louis, a boarding school, was one of many catholic institutions in this small town. The chapel is itself a copy of the basilica, only smaller and much more subtle. The interior is worth a look if it's open. I was lucky to get there shortly before a mass was held, and the priest invited me in.

When Garibaldi's army, in an attempt to unite Italy, threathened the Vatican state, Father Hellemons gathered an army of Dutch volunteers, the zouaves, to fight for the pope. A hopeless cause, perhaps not even a just cause, but I think the volunteers do deserve some respect. A statue and a museum keep their memory alive.

You may admire it, you can think it's the biggest load of kitsch ever. But you can't go to Oudenbosch and not visit the basilica. I mean the interior, it's overwhelming. Wood painted to look like marble, plaster imitating sculpture and lots of paintings and statues. One of these "marble" pillars is in fact a broom closet! I don't think it's beatiful, but it's sure interesting.
The basilica is a copy of the St. Peter in Rome, only smaller. Some say it's a third of the size of its example, others say a half, some even say a sixteenth.
Famous architect P.J.H. Cuypers designed the church, one of only a few churches he designed that isn't in neo-Gothic style. The facade was added later and is a copy of that of the St. John Lateran, also in Rome.

There I stood in front of a church that obviously escaped from Rome and was hiding out in this little village within the Western part of the province of North Brabant. I got intrested and looked up some information about it. This enormous basilica was built by a father Willem (William) Hellemons, who was a personal friend of the pope in Rome and visited the Italian capitol many times, in particularly the Vatican. When he became priest in Oudenbosch, he decided that a copy of the Saint Petrus-basilica should be built at the place where Oudenbosch already had a church. The architect P. Cuijpers started the work in 1864 and this model is scaled 1:3 with the real one. The facade, baring the names of Saint Agatha and Barbara, was added later (1892) in the style of the Saint John Lateran church - as well found in Rome.