[1] The tower was part of St. Martin's Cathedral, also known as the Dom Church, and was built between 1321 and 1382,[1] to a design by John of Hainaut.

[1] Its construction led preacher Geert Groote to protest against the vanity of such an immense project, suggesting it was too tall, too expensive and all but aesthetic.

In 1505 Geert van Wou, then the most famous bell-founder of the Netherlands, made a harmonious peal of thirteen bells.

[citation needed] The cathedral's bells are still rung by hand by members of the Utrecht Bellringers Guild.

In 1664, a new carillon was installed by Juriaan Sprakel of Zutphen,[10] with a mechanism consisting of 35 chimes,[11] made by the brothers Pieter and François Hemony.

The sound signals picked up by these microphones were algorithmically combined into a continuously varying soundscape which was broadcast 24 hours a day by an FM radio transmitter installed on the Dom tower.

[16] Broadcast on 102.3 MHz FM, Radio DOM was part of the exhibition Panorama 2000, organised by the Centraal Museum in Utrecht.

[16] Until recently, the unwritten rule in evaluating planning applications in the city of Utrecht was that no building could be built that exceeded the Dom Tower in height.

[17] This restriction seems to have been dispensed for plans in the developing suburban area in the west of Utrecht (Leidsche Rijn) and a skyscraper of 262 metres in height has been proposed, challenging this long-standing tradition.