I met up with a TravBuddy friend in front of the Amadeus Hotel where I was staying. (Traveling in a foreign country it is very helpful to have a local guide to enrich the experience.) We walked the short distance across the Market Square to Sint Bavokerk for a tour of the cathedral with its long rich history. The very large gothic structure was impressive inside and outside, unlike anything I have seen before. This was a good experience for me wandering around in the very large open spaces with stained glass windows, smaller chapels, artifacts, exhibits, and a magnificient large pipe organ.
According to Wikipedia There was a wooden church built on this site in the 1300s, that later burnt down..By 1479 a more substantial church In 1559 that church was consecrated as a cathedral. With a major change in christian denominations; in 1578 the cathedral was dedicated to Sint Bavo. There was a fire that destroyed part of the with the ravages of time that required many renavations (big and small) even through the 1900s. In 1738 the impressive Christiaan Muller pipe organ with its one thousand pipes...the largest pipe organ in
the world at that time. In 1766 the ten year old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played the pipe organ at Sint Bavokerk on one of his popular tours of Europe. That had to be a super great performance by Amadeus. Once again, I was a day late, and a dollar short.
