The Oude Kirk (Old church, duh!) is the oldest church in Delft (duh!), dating from the thirteenth century. It's in a fairly peripheral part of town considering its history, but that's just as well as it looks like the steeple is about to topple over any minute. The interior photo of this church is the one without the dead king's memorial. The Nieuwe Church is much more centrally located, smack dab in the middle of the market square. It's probably the weirdest church I've ever seen, with an absolutely massive steeple sprouting from a pretty insignificant little church. But despite its eccentricities, it's very important historically. Prince William of Orange, the founder of Holland and the current Dutch monarchy, is buried here (see photo). All the subsequent Dutch monarchs are also buried here, but with considerably less fanfare, in keeping with the very low key style of the monarchy.

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.