Sint-Dimpnakerk

Late-Gothic church with carved retable, the centre of the Dymphna pilgrimage

The town's main church and the symbolic heart of Geel's centuries-old practice of fostering mentally ill people in family homes. Late-Gothic, mostly fifteenth century with earlier elements, with a finely carved Antwerp retable in the choir depicting the life of Saint Dymphna. The Sick-Room (Ziekenkamer) behind the church, where pilgrims spent the nights of their nine-day cure, still survives.

Free to enter. The most atmospheric time is the Dymphna procession in May; the rest of the year the church is mostly quiet, and the wooden Antwerp altarpiece deserves slow looking.

things to do church
A story
Saint Dymphna, the patron saint of the mentally ill, is said to have been murdered by her father near here in the seventh century. The cult that grew up around her shrine produced — by the fourteenth century — the practice of taking visiting pilgrims into local homes, the root of Geel's tradition of community psychiatric care.