St-Étienne-du-Mont

St-Étienne-du-Mont Review

This jewel box of a church has been visited by several popes, owing to the fact that Ste-Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, was buried here before Revolutionaries burned her remains. It was built on the ruins of a first-century abbey founded by Clovis, the first King of the Franks. The church's unique combination of Gothic, Renaissance, and early Baroque styles adds a certain warmth that is lacking in other Parisian churches of pure Gothic style. Here you'll find the only rood screen left in Paris—an ornate 16th-century masterwork of carved wood spanning the nave like a bridge, with a spiral staircase on either side. The organ is the oldest in the city, from 1631. An archbishop of Paris was stabbed to death here in 1857 by a defrocked priest. Look for the marker in the floor near the entrance.