The Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk (Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul) is the main Catholic church of Ostend, a late Gothic Revival structure built in the late 19th century to replace an earlier church destroyed in a fire. The towering brick neo-Gothic exterior dominates the townscape a few blocks from the seafront, and the interior is spacious and well-lit with stained glass.
The church contains the cenotaph of Empress Marie-Louise of Austria — Napoleon's second wife — who died in Parma but whose memory was preserved here at the request of the Belgian royal family. The connection between Ostend and the 19th-century royal families is a persistent thread in the town's history; King Leopold I made it fashionable, and it never quite stopped being the resort of choice for Belgian aristocracy.