Bartholomeus Gasthuis

Look to your left, and you will spot a long, dark red brick building with a steeply pitched roof and a striking, tall arched gothic window on its right gable. This is the Bartholomeïgasthuis.

Back in thirteen sixty-seven, this started out as a humble shelter for weary pilgrims and beggars. But it struggled to survive. Then, in thirteen seventy-eight, a wealthy nobleman named Willem van Abcoude stepped in with a massive donation. He completely transformed the place, renaming it the Saint Bartholomeus Gasthuis, and decreed that from then on, it would only take in the sick. Gasthuis essentially means a guest house or hospital, a sanctuary for those with nowhere else to go.

Willem even set up a brotherhood of twenty-three men to guarantee the hospital's future, laying down strict rules in a foundation letter. He also created a charity fund to hand out weekly support to the city's poor. That incredible legacy of care stuck. Up in the structure, there is a bell cast in fourteen seventy-one by Steven Butendycke. It is the second oldest bell in Utrecht, and volunteers still ring it every single day at twelve P-M, exactly as they have for centuries.

By sixteen thirty-two, the hospital added a Regentenzaal, a magnificent boardroom for its directors. A few years later, they commissioned a master weaver from Delft, Maximiliaan van der Gucht, to create four enormous, custom wall tapestries. These tapestries are a unique masterpiece of Dutch weaving history. You can take a peek at your screen to see the elegant interior and its original beamed ceiling. And if you want to see how beautifully those seventeenth-century tapestries have been preserved over the decades, check out the historic before and after comparison in the app.

Everything changed in eighteen eighteen. The King demanded that the local university have a clinical hospital, but the city authorities realized they did not actually have one. Their solution was to force all seven of the city's independent guest houses to merge into this single building. To fit everyone inside, they ripped out the old bed boxes and built an entire new floor right through the middle of the medieval sick ward. That is why the exterior looks the way it does today, though they did leave that lovely gothic window intact.

After dodging the wrecking ball in the nineteen eighties, this remarkable building celebrated its six hundred and fiftieth anniversary in twenty seventeen. The doors are open every day of the week from eight thirty A-M to eight P-M if you ever want to step inside. What an absolute triumph of survival. Reflect on this long legacy of care. When you are ready, let's keep walking.