150 Churches in Paris and elsewhere

 This is a tiny charming chapel just down the road from the house we were renting near the beach last summer. It was built at the end of the sixteenth century. Sainte Barbe (Saint Barbara) is one of those "I was a saint before you were a saint" sort of people (from the point of view of an English Catholic) because she was martyred in the third century. Before her death she was tortured , but every morning her wounds healed miraculously, so eventually her father beheaded her. Then again she may not actually have existed because all the stories about her that we know of were written centuries later.  Her speciality was to guarantee to her devotees that they would not die without having had first the opportunity to go to confession and to have the final sacrament which they used to call "extreme unction" (these days it is generally called "the anointing of the sick"). The chapel has the simplest Stations of the Cross I have seen so far. It also has statues of...

  This lovely Gothic building is very old but has only been a cathedral since the 1960s. Saint Denis was one of those unlucky early Christians who lived before Emperor Constantine had decreed that Christianity was cool. On the one hand, these Christians could boast of being the first on a trend, along the lines of the authors of those classic songs "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool" , or "I was a Punk Before You Were a Punk".  On the downside, the Romans were pretty good at martyring them: and Saint Denis was beheaded in the third century. We are told that nonplussed by all that, he picked up his own head and wandered off.. NB: some buried kings. Information in French Information in English Information in Occitan