Utrecht’s Dom Tower will be back in its full glory in the summer of 2024

The restoration of the Dom Tower in Utrecht will be completed in the summer of 2024. That is earlier than expected, the municipality said on Thursday. The construction costs also remained within the estimated budget of a bit over 37.2 million euros.

The tallest church tower in the country has been under construction since 2017. After two years of research, the restoration work got underway in 2019. The first parts of scaffolding will disappear from the spire in January 2023. The scaffolding at the spire was used as a stage earlier this summer, where the band Kensington performed at the kick-off of the festivities around the Utrecht’s nine hundredth anniversary of obtaining city rights.

The completion of the roof lantern will start next summer. This will free up the top 40 meters of the tower. "The dismantling of the scaffolding will continue step by step, and it is expected to be gone in April 2024. The construction site should also disappear by August," explained a spokesperson. The visitor’s elevator to the spire, a construction lift, will disappear at the beginning of January. From that moment on people will have to take the stairs again.

The restoration of the 112 meter high Dom Tower was badly needed. Routine maintenance was less frequent in recent decades, and no large-scale restoration was performed. Now the medieval tower will no longer need significant maintenance for the next fifty years.

Part of the construction costs were collected in a more playful way. For example, the debris that was freed during construction was used to make Dom Tower souvenirs and artwork. Stones that were replaced were auctioned off relocated elsewhere in the city.