Hannah's Adventures in Europe: St. Liduina's Basilica

One of the places that was open during the Schiedam Open Monumenten dag was St. Liduina's Basilica. Or, more formally, de Basiliek van de Heilige Liduina en Onze Lieve Vrouw Rozenkrans--The Basilica of of the Holy Liduina and Our Dear Lady of the Rosary.

It is one of the buildings that is not normally open to the general public.

That little girl in the pink, by the way, was having such a good time playing in the fountain. It was the kind that alternated spraying out of different holes, with different pressures, and she was dancing around all over the place, shrieking and laughing and having the time of her life.

St. Liduina is the patron saint of Schiedam and also of the chronically ill. According to Dutch Wikipedia, she is thought to be, perhaps, one of the first recorded cases of multiple sclerosis. According to the church's webpage (which you can visit here, if you like) St. Liduina was a medieval lady who fell and broke one of her ribs while skating on the river. The rib became abscessed and poor Liduina was bed-ridden for the rest of her life. But, if anyone who was sick or lame came to her, she could heal them. She was proclaimed a saint in 1890. And, in 1990, the St. Liduina Kerk got upgraded to a Basilica. I don't know what the difference is but apparently it is a pretty big deal.

This is a picture from a book on the lives of the saints showing her fall.

Apparently, Thomas A Kempis wrote about her as well, so I guess that she is kind of a famous saint. And still famous enough, that she has her very own Facebook page here.

On marginally related note, there is a street called Thomas A Kempisstraat in Schiedam. And I thought it was interesting enough to take a picture of but, apparently, not interesting enough to walk across the street to get a good picture of it.

The Basilica has a very nice approach. This is across a large square from the center of town that leads straight to it. The big, modern looking building on the left is the Nieuwe Stadhuis. It is pretty boring but it is quite huge. The building on the right is just a bunch of shops and restaurants.

This is a photo of the Nieuwe Stadhuis. The public library is also here.

And here Ben, just for you, is a picture of me. I intended to take a picture of the engraved seals that are on the automatic sliding glass doors (which just seems so wrong, somehow) but none of them really turned out. But, I did accidentally end up with a picture of me sight-seeing, so, there you go Ben. I am not just making it all up. =-)

Also, I kind of like the view of the square that you can see reflected.

You can see how close I was cutting this trip, too. The church closed at 5 (or 17:00) so I just barely made it.

I am still not quite sure to make of the interior. The best way I can think of describing it (and trust me, the photos don't do it justice--I think I need to figure out how to do the white balance on this camera) is to say that it looks like a 70s take on Baroque. Everything is in soft pink and green, including the bricks. It was pretty, but it was not your typical church decor. And what made it especially odd was that the floor was made some 70s-looking rust and black and cream tile, which didn't really match the rest of the theme that well at all.

I don't have any picture of the front because there were little old people sitting in the church praying and it just seemed kind of rude to get in their way. I asked the supervisors who were keeping an eye on things before I took these pictures and they were fine with it but I didn't want to bother the people more that I needed to.