The Bovenkerk (English: Upper Church; also known as the Church of St. Nicholas) is a large,

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

church and the most striking element on the skyline of Kampen, Overijssel,

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. The interior of the church contains an early-Renaissance choir screen, a stone pulpit and a monumental organ. The church has 1,250 seats. It is a Reformed church.Official website
(in Dutch).

The Construction

The construction of the church took place in several phases: * Construction of a Romanesque church (12th century) * Construction of

Early Gothic Early Gothic is the style of architecture that appeared in northern France, Normandy and then England between about 1130 and the mid-13th century. It combined and developed several key elements from earlier styles, particularly from Romanesque ar ...

church (last quarter of 13th century) * Church gets a basilica choir (last quarter of 14th century) * Plan for a basilica nave fails (early 15th century) * The construction is completed (second half 15th century)

Graves

A common practice for old historic churches was to bury the dead under the Church. The Bovenkerk is no exception to this practice, where famous Dutch persons originating from Kampen are buried. One of them is

Hendrick Avercamp Hendrick Avercamp (January 27, 1585 (bapt.) – May 15, 1634 (buried)) was a Dutch painter during the Dutch Golden Age of painting. He was one of the earliest landscape painters of the 17th-century Dutch school, he specialized in painting th ...

(1585-1634), one of the first landscape painters of the 17th-century Dutch school, specialized in painting the Netherlands in winter. Another is Jan Bantjes (1700-1779) and Jacomina Leussen (1707-1770) who were wealthy landowners, shipowners, financiers of Berbice plantations and privateers. Their eldest son Gerrit (Jan Geerts) Bantjes (1734-1782) who left for the Cape of Good Hope in Nov.1754 started a line of descendants who laid down prominent South African history such as the exploratory Kommissitrek of 1834 to Port Natal to find a new homeland for the Cape Boers, the Natal-land Report which started The Great Trek (1837–38) and the battles that followed, the Discovery of the Witwatersrand Gold Reef in 1884 and the founding of Johannesburg in 1886. This same Bantjes line gave South Africa's first two presidents their grounding education and were instrumental in influencing the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) setting Germany and Great Britain on a collision course. Back to the church, the

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building wi ...

contains a small ornament of red

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is typically not foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorphose ...

with a green marble

urn An urn is a vase, often with a cover, with a typically narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms, generally reflects its use rather than any particular shape or ...

in memory of Vice Admiral

Jan Willem de Winter Jan Willem de Winter (French: Jean Guillaume de Winter, 23 March 1761 – 2 June 1812) was a Dutch admiral during the Napoleonic Wars. Biography Early life De Winter was born in Kampen and entered naval service at a young age. He disting ...

(1761-1812). The heart of Vice Admiral De Winter is enclosed in this urn, while his body is buried in the

Panthéon The Panthéon (, from the Classical Greek word , , ' empleto all the gods') is a monument in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France. It stands in the Latin Quarter, atop the , in the centre of the , which was named after it. The edifice was b ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

Gallery

File:Kampen, toren van de Bovenkerk RM23053 vanaf de Vloeddijk ter hoogte van Prinsenstraat-Burgwal foto3 2016-02-17 11.39.jpg, The Bovenkerk from the Prinsenstraat-Burgwal File:Kampen, toren van de Bovenkerk RM23053 vanaf Vloeddijk-Venestraat foto8 2016-02-17 11.49.jpg, The Bovenkerk from the Vloeddijk-Venestraat File:Kampen, toren van de Bovenkerk RM23053 vanaf Vloeddijk-Muntsteeg foto5 2016-02-17 12.05.jpg, The Bovenkerk from the Vloeddijk-Muntsteeg

References

;Attribution *

External links

De Bovenkerk website (Dutch)

Some 90 pictures of the church
{{Authority control Reformed church buildings in the Netherlands Churches in Overijssel Kampen, Overijssel Protestant churches converted from Roman Catholicism