LODEWIJKSKERK (Church of St. Louis):

Built as a hospice chapel for a stopping place on the medieval pilgrimage route to Santiago da Compostella in Spain, the building became a guildhall after the Reformation and was also used briefly as a food distribution center when Leiden. s siege ended. William Bradford belonged to the cloth guild that met here, and this was where cloth approved by the guild was sold.

The chapel marks the edge of the destruction caused by the 1807 gun powder explosion. By order of Louis Napoleon, who had been appointed King of The Netherlands by his brother, the French Emperor Napoleon, the building once again became a Roman Catholic church. It was renamed after St. Louis, the patron saint of France and Louis Napoleon. s namesake. Louis Napoleon had personally come from The Hague to help in the rescue efforts the day after the explosion, which could be heard as far away as The Hague, Delft, and Amsterdam.

The Herensteeg leads back to the Pieterskerk, passing the well-stocked antiquarian print shop of IJ. Meurs. On the corner before the Pieterskerk is the antiquarian bookshop, auction house, and publisher, Templum Salomonis, where there has been a library, book publisher, or book auction house nearly continuously since the 14th century. Turn right in the corner across from Templum Salomonis and enter the little archway leading to the