100 Churches in Paris and elsewhere

111 Paris 3 ème arrondissement Saint-Denys-du-Saint-Sacrement So, Saint Denis of the Holy Sacrament. Star attraction of this church, which is just down the road from the Picasso museum, is a stunning painting of Jesus being taken down from the cross, surrounded by people getting worked up about it. This was produced by Eugène Delacroix, best-known for his 1830 painting of Liberty leading the people to insurrection. The neoclassical church was completed in the 1830s (neoclassical - that is to say, like a   Roman temple but with fewer gods) . Above the gate you have sculptures of the four cardinal virtues – prudence, temperance, strength and justice,which help us avoid the seven deadly sins. You also have a painting inside of them blokes who were on their way to Emmaus when Jesus, recently deceased, turns up in disguise. The Stations of the Cross are very original, in a sort of enamel, and of unusual shapings, and there is a grand baptismal font. The church is named after the ...

The photos on this blog are ones I took myself, *but* when my wife and daughter headed off to Albania for a week’s holiday without me, I managed to persuade them to do a big church for me out there, to wit the Cathedral of the Resurrection, in the capital, Tirana. The church is of Orthodox tradition, so mosaics, chandeliers etc. And the most amazing belltower symbolizing the four evangelists. There are not a lot of cathedrals dedicated to the Resurrection – St Peter and Our Lady have a bunch more, but there is one in Tokyo, one in Lahore Pakistan, one in South Africa, and this one. It was opened in 2012, to celebrate twenty years of   being religious again, after religious freedom was restored in the country, in 1991 (previously Albania has declared itself an atheist state and banned religious ceremonies along with many other activities). The Albanian orthodox church declared its independence from Greek orthodoxy back in the early twentieth century afer the Hudson incident, a...