150 Churches in Paris and elsewhere

  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

This is actually the nearest church to my home in the Parisian suburbs. Montreuil has a hundred thousand people and a Communist mayor, and this church boasts in its leaflets « A thousand years of history ». It is undergoing some serious renovation and the frontage is now all spick and span.  I got a good picture of a … disused confessional, and I very much liked the holy water basins, which were crisscrossed with « police-tape » as they were out of use because of our old friend COVID 19. (My dictionary tells me the technical word for these basins is a stoup). One of the plaques I photographed was in memory of a man who moved to French Canada and married a native Canadian. The haut reliefs of various saints in wood surrounded the baptismal fount. I imagine the ones with a quill are meant to be evangelists. Information in French  Information in English