St. Catherine's Cathedral in Utrecht, often called the Catharijnekerk, was built as part of a Carmelite friary founded in 1456. The large church was completed around the middle of the sixteenth century. A Protestant congregation used it from 1580 to 1815, when it returned to Roman Catholics as a garrison church. It became a parish church in 1842 and the cathedral and metropolitan church of the Netherlands in 1853.
In 1898 the architect Alfred Tepe began major changes, lengthening the church with a new western bay. The new facade copied the older one, which was possibly designed by Rombout Keldermans II. A tower modeled on the town hall tower in Kampen was added in 1900.
Relics of Saint Willibrord are kept under the main altar. In 2018 the parish board announced plans to close the cathedral, and Cardinal Eijk overturned that decision in 2019.
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