St Martin's Church of Aalst, Gothic church in Aalst, Belgium

St Martin's Church is a late Brabantine Gothic church on the Hopmarkt in Aalst, built in four phases between 1480 and 1664. Pale stone walls with slender buttresses and pointed-arch windows carry a steep slate roof, from which a short octagonal flèche rises. A lower side chapel with a gabled slate roof adjoins the nave, and a brick section with tall pointed windows continues the structure.

Construction began on the Hopmarkt in 1480 or 1481 and ran in four phases until 1664, starting with Jan van der Wouwe and continued by Herman I de Waghemakere in Brabantine Gothic. A plague outbreak in 1485 and the iconoclasm around 1570 halted work; Gheeraert Spillebout and Gillis Negheleput finished the brick west front. A 1655 plan for a tower higher than any Belgian cathedral tower was never built.

The Rubens painting, Christ Appointing Saint Roch as Patron Saint of Plague Victims, was saved from the burning church in 1947 and from confiscation during the First World War by Franz Callebaut. The white-painted limewood group of Saint Martin cutting his cloak, designed by Erasmus Quellinus II, returned in 2019 after removal in 1901.

The building undergoes ongoing restoration work to maintain its structural integrity while remaining accessible for services and visits. It is helpful to check current opening hours beforehand since restoration activities can occasionally affect access to certain areas.

The 1604 text uncovered above the sacrament tower in 2021 had been hidden for centuries; the tower itself was built by Jeroom Duquesnoy the Elder of Brussels. The church also keeps the Rubens painting of Saint Roch and the plague victims, saved from the burning building during the fire of 29 March 1947.