150 Churches in Paris and elsewhere

  178 Paris, Saint James and St Christopher. Fluo calvary. Nineteenth century neoclassical church in the North of Paris, shared between Jamie and Chris. Fluo stations of the cross from the 1980s, Renaissance baptismal font. There is a copy of that statue from St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. And they have a gospel choir. The marble pulpit has a bas relief showing “Jesus converting the nations of the earth”. And fine frescoes at the front show St Christopher (with Jesus on his shoulders) and St James. A plaque commemorates the Archbishop of Paris, Denys Affre, who, it seems, was killed by a stray bullet while approaching the barricades in the 1848 revolution, aiming to organize some sort of mediation.

  Obviously, breathtaking. I ran out of superlatives before I even got inside. Worth coming a very long way to see ( which I myself didn’t: I had a conference round the corner). And it will soon be finished, with the help of the ticket income from around 5 million visitors a year. It will have eighteen towers: twelve for the apostles, four for the evangelists, one for Mother Mary, and one for the little biddy baby, born, born, born in Bethlehem. The land to build the basilica was bought in 1881 (the land was cheap then cos not much city), but the church was not actually consecrated until 2010, by Pope Benedict.  Gaudi of course was chief architect, until he died in 1926 in a tram accident. Since then other architects have tried to follow his inspiration. I was interested in the fact that the large number of columns in the centre of the structure means that the outside walls are not carrying as much weight and this allows them to have those huge stained glass expanses. Stunning...