The Oude Kerk is a Dutch Reformed house of worship and Delft's oldest parish church. It was officially founded in 1246, the same year in which Delft received city rights from Count William II, even though it is generally assumed that there had been a wooden church on this site as early as 1050. Names of its ministers, going back to 1572, fill an inside wall.
The Gothic tower reflected in the canal, with its brick spire and four turrets, was added between 1325 and 1350. The church is sober and clean because of iconoclastic riots in 1566 and 1572, which made a violent point of destroying all hints of Roman Catholicism and its imagery.
Within the church are the tombs of two local boys done good: the inventor of the microscope, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, and the painter Johannes Vermeer. Vermeer's actual tombstone is just a simple stone plaque in the floor. It is across from the pulpit (below), which dates from 1548, the only item inside the church surviving the riots in the mid-1500s.
When Vermeer died, he was broke; and the cost for a stone was determined by the size of the grave. To save money, Vermeer's family supposedly buried him standing up--the reason the stone is so small. The sign on the pedestal, however, says this marks the "spot where the grave used to be."
Although another, more grander Vermeer monument was installed in the church in 2007--a reflection of his greater popularity now than in previous generations--the exact location of his body in the church is unknown today.
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