Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Kerselarekapel
Chapel · Flanders
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This brutalist concrete chapel crowning the Edelareberg near Oudenaarde marks a pilgrimage site dating to 1452, when a healing Marian statue was hung on a cherry tree here. The medieval chapel burned down in 1961; architect Juliaan Lampens won an international competition to replace it, and the striking new chapel opened in 1965. Since 1953 it has hosted an Ascension Day blessing of cars, trucks, and motorcycles.
Architect Juliaan Lampens designed the chapel as a single sculptural volume of raw concrete that continues the hillside's slope rather than sitting apart from it, a radical departure from convention that made it one of the defining works in Belgian 20th-century church architecture. His original vision was starkly minimal, with bare concrete benches and no ornament, but later decades added carpet, wooden seating and stained glass that softened that severity, and by 2012 yellow steel beams were added to stabilize roof sections where the thin concrete had deteriorated and exposed its reinforcement. A later structural assessment by Ghent University's engineering faculty found the building in better condition than feared. Pilgrims visiting in May traditionally buy lekkies, hand-made candies of brown sugar, rock candy syrup and butter, sold at Kerselare's fair since it began on Ascension Day in 1953.
What you see
The chapel's raw concrete form seems to grow directly out of the Edelareberg's slope, its roofline continuing the hillside's pitch rather than sitting on top of it.
Practical
The Ascension Day car and motorcycle blessing at Kerselare, the largest of its kind in the country, runs at 10:00 and 15:00, each preceded by Mass in the chapel.
part of: The cobbled bergs of Flandersbrutalismpilgrimageclassic climb