The canal house at Oudezijds Voorburgwal, now number 40, was built in 1630. Between 1661 and 1663 its top three floors were converted into a house church. The article calls it a schuilkerk, a clandestine church, where Catholics and other dissenters held services when they could not worship publicly. The building was renovated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
After the Church of St Nicholas opened, the house church stopped being used as a church. On April 28, 1888, it opened as a museum, the second oldest in Amsterdam after the Rijksmuseum. It was previously called Museum Amstelkring.
Visitors can see the church, a Lady chapel, a confessional and a seventeenth-century kitchen. It received the European Heritage Label in 2024 and is a national monument.
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