prestressed concrete from 1957. The bells are surrounded by tuning forks and at the top angels are turned towards the crucifix. Interior St. Willibrordus is built in the shape of a Latin cross. The building parts are grouped around the tower that is centrally located in the church typical of Flemish ecclesiastical architecture. The choir church has a choir aisle on the east end of the basilica from which eight rectangular side chapels and three polygonal radial chapels extend. These chapels were originally built for the craft guilds who worked in Hulst. To the left and right of the main altar are the conopeum (red-yellow parasol or umbrellino), the tintinnabulum (the bell), the insignia of a basilica. In the years 1841–1842 the interior of the Catholic choir section was completely painted. These paintings were removed in the early 1930s, among other things to create more uniformity within the church. The gold paint on the cabbage leaves of the capitals was found to be impossible to remove without risk of damage. The first chapel on the north side of the choir is used as a baptistery. The baptismal font is made of stone: the copper lid is decorated with a picture of John the Baptist. At the third chapel a door and an open pointed arch can be seen at the top. The door gives access to the former library in which the books belonging to the church were kept. In the period that St. Willibrordus was a simultaneous church for Catholics and Protestants from 1806 to 1929, the library served as a sacristy. In the middle radial chapel at the far east of the church is kept a medallion of Mary, which originally was in one of the bells. After the tower fire of 1876, this medallion was found in the melted chimes. Second World War During the Second World War, the tower served as a military lookout for German troops stationed in the Netherlands. On the bell in the tower, soldiers inscribed '1940', 'Gott strafe England' and a swastika. Elsewhere in the attic of the church, German text with swastika were scrawled on walls. With the intention of disabling the German lookout post, during their advance through the east of Zeelandic Flanders the first regiment of the Polish Panzer Division shelled the church tower. About seventy shells hit their target and most of the tower burned on 18 September