Amstelkring, Amsterdam

The Amstelkring Museum, Our Lord in the Attic, is housed in a 17th-century canal house. On the lower floors there are authentic living rooms that date back to the 17th and 18th Centuries. Upstairs there is a perfectly preserved Roman Catholic Attic Church, built in 1663. A maze of rooms, halls and staircases with lots of peepholes remind you of Holland's Golden Age. Following the Alteration in 1578 (when Amsterdam became Protestant), Catholics were not permitted to practice their religion in public. Instead, this took place in all sorts of rooms in houses, and later in fully furnished clandestine churches: the conventicles. These were privately owned, and designed not to be recognizable as churches from the outside. The entrance to Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic) was in the alley rather than on the more conspicuous canal side. It served as a parish church until 1887. The building now houses a museum.