Churches in Paris and elsewhere

 This medieval church near the Sorbonne is named after "St Julien the poor". We don't know much about this saint, but he is the patron saint of... hotel owners, so he is in the right part of town here. Like most really old churches round here, this one replaced a previous one which the Vikings destroyed. Chunks of it were built in the 12th and 17th centuries. After the French Revolution, it was used as a warehouse for forty years or so before being a church again. Since 1889 the church has been run by Greek Catholics who are a church with some different ideas, but basically inside the Catholic pale (so to speak). Find more about these Greek catholics here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melkite_Greek_Catholic_Church . Lovely collection box, plenty of Greek-looking images. Information in French  Information in English Information in Arabic

  Lots of lovely colours, beautiful blue on the ceiling. Interesting semicircular confessional and grand marble pulpit. This church and abbey goes back a long way (originally founded by the son of the first king of the Franks),  with a very very old bunch of ( Merovingian) kings buried here (as well as an odd King of Poland and a few exiled Scottish Catholics). Vikings destroyed it a couple of times.  Mabillon, a seventeenth century scholar and monk, who wrote about diplomacy, is buried here. Lots of fabulous frescoes of old and new testament episodes are painted on the walls, and these paintings were all freshly restored just a few years ago. Information in French https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbaye_de_Saint-Germain-des-Pr%C3%A9s Information in English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Germain-des-Pr%C3%A9s_(abbey) Information in Lithuanian https://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pary%C5%BEiaus_Sen_%C5%BDermen_de_Pr%C4%97_abatija