St. Martin’s Cathedral, Utrecht, or Dom Church is a Gothic church dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours, which was the cathedral of the Diocese of Utrecht during the Middle Ages. It is the country’s only pre-Reformation cathedral, but has been a Protestant church since 1580.

It was once the Netherlands’ largest church, but the nave collapsed in a storm in 1674 and has never been rebuilt, leaving the tower isolated from the east end.

The building is the one church in the Netherlands that closely resembles the style of classic Gothic architecture as developed in France. All other Gothic churches in the Netherlands belong to one of the many regional variants. Unlike most of its French predecessors, the building has only one tower, the 112-metre-high (367 ft) Dom Tower, which is the hallmark of the city.

The church today

What remains of St. Martin’s today are the choir, the transept and the Dom Tower. The central nave of the cathedral which collapsed in the storm of 1674 is now a square with large trees, the Domplein [nl]. Stones in various colours indicate in the pavement the original outlines of the church.

In 2004, 750 years after construction began, the collapsed parts were temporarily rebuilt in scaffolding material. The scaffolding was also blown down in a storm, like the original nave.

In 2013 a project has started to expose archaeological artifacts of the St. Martin cathedral.