Saint Martin's Cathedral, Gothic cathedral in Ieper, Belgium

Saint Martin's Church, still called a cathedral locally, is a Brabantine Gothic building of pale grey stone begun in 1230. Its tower, 102 metres tall, carries a slender needle spire with corner pinnacles above several levels of tall pointed windows with carved tracery. A long steep grey roof adjoins the tower, and a shorter dark spire stands to its left.

Work on the cathedral began in 1230 on the foundations of an older Romanesque church and was largely finished by the late 14th century. World War I left the building in ruins, and a full reconstruction carried out in the 1920s brought it back to its medieval form.

The church is still commonly called Sint-Maartenskathedraal, though it lost cathedral status in 1801 when Ypres was placed under the Diocese of Ghent. Inside, a rose window in the south transept, given by British troops to King Albert I, was made by Irish artist Wilhelmina Geddes in 1935–1938 and shows the Te Deum. More than twenty paintings hang in the church, including Joris Liebaert's large 1657 canvas of the Siege of Ypres of 1383.

The main entrance opens onto Sint-Maartensplein in the center of Ypres, just a short walk from the Cloth Hall and the main square. As an active parish church, it is worth checking whether a service is underway before entering, and keeping voices low inside.

The tower reaches 102 metres, making it one of the tallest buildings in Belgium. Its spire was destroyed in the First World War and rebuilt between 1922 and 1930 slightly higher than the pre-war version, so the silhouette differs from the medieval one.