Let those walkers come, Vlissingen thinks. The monument that should profile the city as a pilgrimage city was officially unveiled on Saturday.
Around the pilgrim monument are four pedestals, on which are a compass rose with direction and distance, a QR code with the story of Santiago and a bronze shell. A small column with a lectern with interesting facts has been added. This completes the work of art, which was made by seven Zeeland artists. Two ‘pilgrims’ had come to Vlissingen especially for the occasion to consecrate the monument under the watchful eye of dozens of Vlissingers. Main sponsors and alderman Rens Reijnierse were presented with a pilgrim bottle designed by Hans Bommeljé, which may also be sold.
Koen Tesselaar of the Sint Jacobscafé has been welcoming passing pilgrims for years, who still have 2486 kilometers to travel from Vlissingen to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. He felt that the city could profile itself more as a transit point and that the modest information board with scallop shells should make way for a more striking, contemporary and inspiring monument. Artists and designers Hans Bommeljé and Leon Riekwell set to work with it. And now, only three years later because of all the vicissitudes surrounding corona, the monument at the intersection of Sint Jacobsstraat with Oude Markt and Lepelstraat has been officially unveiled.
The Sint Jacobscafé on the Oude Markt, but also bookstore ‘t Spui – like the Sint Jacobskerk itself – is a stamping post for pilgrims who travel southwards via the west coast of the Netherlands to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.