Leuven Cathedral: St Peter's Church and Other Leuven Churches

What Leuven's cathedral actually is

Sint-Pieterskerk began in 986 and was rebuilt from the fifteenth century as a Gothic church, a project that ran for more than a century and left only the crypt from the earlier Romanesque building. Three unfinished towers collapsed in the sixteenth century because of unstable ground, and the planned towers were never completed, so the west front you see is a stub rather than a full spire. Treat it as a great collegiate church, not a cathedral, and the building makes sense.

Fire in 1914 and bombing in 1944 destroyed the roof and much of the interior, and later restorations rebuilt what visitors now walk through. The result is a bright, tall space on the edge of a square that also holds the town hall; for the wider story of the square, see the Leuven Architecture guide.

St Peter's Church: the building and its unfinished towers

Come in through the Grote Markt side and look up before you go in: the truncated west towers are the building's defining feature, evidence of a Gothic ambition that geology and money never matched. The surviving Romanesque crypt under the choir is the oldest fabric on the site and the one part that predates the Gothic rebuild.

Inside, the scale is parish church rather than cathedral, which suits a visit of under an hour if you are short of time. The reward is that the artworks sit in the church they were made for rather than behind museum glass, and the restored interior gives them room.

Inside Sint-Pieterskerk: Dieric Bouts and Proud Margaret

The headline work is Dieric Bouts's Last Supper, painted between 1464 and 1468 and held in the church as part of the M Leuven collection. M runs a guided sensory experience through the church that explains the Gothic building and its Flemish Master paintings in their original setting, so the church doubles as a museum stop.

In the choir aisle, the Gothic chapel of Beate Maria was added around 1535 as the resting place of Margaret of Louvain, known in Dutch as Fiere Margriet or Proud Margaret. She is honoured locally but is neither a Saint nor beatified: the application was submitted and never sanctioned. The chapel holds her neo-Gothic reliquary of 1902, a heavy goldsmith's piece funded largely by young maidservants, alongside the jug tradition links to her and five paintings of her legend by Pieter Jozef Verhaghen.

On Fair Monday in early September the reliquary is opened in an annual ritual, and on one recent occasion visitors could see her skull with its silver crown and her bones. The chapel itself is visible from Rector De Somerplein even when the church is shut.

Visiting St Peter's Church: opening days and times

St Peter's opens daily from 10.00 to 16.30, with Sundays running 11.00 to 16.30. Note that M Leuven, the museum that holds the church's art collection, closes on Wednesdays, so keep that in mind when planning a wet-weather museum day.

Plan a mid-morning arrival so you have time to see the Bouts Last Supper and the Proud Margaret chapel before lunch on the square. The M Leuven sensory experience walks you through the Gothic building and its Flemish Master paintings in their original setting.

Other churches in Leuven worth a look

St Michael's Church began in 1650 as a Baroque building with an impressive façade, was consecrated in 1671 and took until the end of the seventeenth century to finish inside. It sits within about ten minutes' walk of St Peter's and is the strongest second stop for anyone interested in Leuven art and architecture.

St Gertrude's Church was built between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and its west tower was crowned in 1453 with a spire by Jan van Ruysbroeck, the designer behind the Brussels town hall spire. Bomb damage in 1944 led to reconstruction from 1950 and rededication in 1953, with further restorations in the 1990s and early 2000s.

St Anthony's Chapel at the foot of the Ramberg began as a chapel built by St Peter's clergy in 1299 and was rebuilt in late Gothic style in 1617. Its crypt holds the remains of Jozef De Veuster, the Belgian missionary known as Father Damien, transferred from Molokai in 1936.

The Church of Saint-Joseph on Bogaardenstraat is the modern counterpoint, built in 1974 to a design by Victor Broos and listed as open daily from 9.00 to 19.00. Inside are a protected Cavaillé-Coll organ of around 1871, still played at every liturgy, and processional banners and statues rescued from the earlier neo-Gothic parish church, and the adjoining garden is a quiet pause near the university library carillon.

How the churches fit into a one to three day itinerary

For a single day, do St Peter's and the Grote Markt first thing, cross to M Leuven afterwards, and add St Michael's on the walk back. On two days, give the second morning to St Gertrude's and St Anthony's Chapel on the Ramberg slope, then take the Church of Saint-Joseph in the afternoon when you want somewhere calm. Our Museums in Leuven guide lists the city's other collections if you want more indoor stops.

With three days, keep the churches as anchors between the city's museums rather than a separate trail, since all of them sit within roughly a quarter of an hour of the Grote Markt on foot. Read the Leuven architecture guide alongside this page if the Gothic and Baroque dates start to blur.

Which Leuven church should you start with?

Start with Sint-Pieterskerk: it answers the cathedral question, holds the Bouts Last Supper and the Proud Margaret chapel, and sits on the square you will cross anyway. Give it an hour, then use St Michael's, St Gertrude's, St Anthony's Chapel or Saint-Joseph to fill the rest of the day according to which century you want next.