The Nieuwe Kirk (or New Church for those of you so monolingual that you can't translate from Dutch) sits right next to the Royal Palace. This is one of two old Catholic churches that were stripped of decoration, stained windows smashed, and repainted white to make it a boringly proper Protestant church. While the Protestants eventually won the religious war in Holland, it was touch and go for a few decades and the Protestants sometimes got ahead of themselves. For example, a bunch of Anabaptists thought it would be a good idea to strip and dance naked in the plaza, for I guess religious reasons that I don't quite grasp. Anyway, the city authorities thought otherwise, and cut their chests open, ripped out their hearts, shoved them in their mouths and cut off their heads to use as decoration along the city walls. Another (clothed) Protestant group stormed this church, then called the Church of Our Lady, and smashed it up. One seven year old girl threw her shoe at a statue of Mary. This proved to be a decade too soon for this sort of thing, as the little girl was enclosed in a barrel and floated off to sea. The church was in the process or erecting a huge spire when the Protestants took over, but that was stopped, so the massive church looks like more like a government building than a church.