St Lawrence Church took 75 years to build, from 1449 to 1525, and its patron saint set the tone. Lawrence was a Roman deacon martyred by being roasted alive on a grill, and according to legend, his last words were: 'I'm cooked, turn me over and eat me.'

It is Rotterdam's only medieval building, its tower walls 1.5 metres thick and fanning to four metres underground to stand on the city's boggy soil. A wooden spire was added in 1621, rotted within twenty years and was never replaced. The 1940 bombing left it badly damaged, and the city council wanted it demolished. Queen Wilhelmina refused. Restoration took fifteen years.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use the Lawrence Church to anchor Rotterdam's full story, from the Reformation's unusually peaceful local chapter to the Erasmus statue outside, the oldest outdoor statue in the Netherlands, buried in a museum garden to hide it from the Nazis.