Description of the attraction
The Church of Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre is arguing for the right to be called the oldest church in Paris with Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It is located behind the facade of the Sacre Coeur and seems to disappear for the eyes of tourists in this majestic canopy. And the church is very interesting.
It was built as a church of the Abbey of Montmartre - it was founded in 1153 together with her son, King Louis VII, Adelaide of Savoy. She became the first abbess here, died a year later, and was buried here. An exceptional phenomenon - Adelaide of Savoy was a queen, "according to status" her ashes should rest in Saint-Denis.
The monastery had an unenviable fate. In 1590, Henry VI laid siege to Paris and occupied the Montmartre Hill. When he lifted the siege, almost all the nuns left with a detachment of Huguenots. In 1790, the revolutionaries destroyed the monastery, the forty-sixth abbess Louise de Montmorency-Laval was sent to the guillotine just a few days before Thermidor, which put an end to the terror of the Jacobins.
Only the church has survived from the entire monastery. Gone are the days when the great Marc-Antoine Charpentier wrote sacred music especially for Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre. The revolutionaries desecrated the church, having built the Temple of Reason here. Then a warehouse was located here for some time.
In 1794, an optical telegraph of the Chappe brothers system was installed on the tower of the church, one of the highest points in Paris. It was this station that received the message about Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.
Holy Masses in the church were resumed only in 1908. During the Second World War, old stained glass windows perished, in 1953 they were replaced with neo-Gothic stained glass windows by the glassblower and designer Maurice Max-Ingran. It is believed that the marble columns inside the church date back to late antiquity, when a temple dedicated to Mars stood on this site. The bronze gates of the church by the Italian Tommaso Gismondi, which survived in all revolutions and wars, are very beautiful. The main gates depict scenes from the life of the Apostle Peter, the heavenly patron of the temple - from his calling by Jesus to the crucifixion in Rome.
Adjacent to the church is the smallest abandoned cemetery in Paris, Calvère (“the cemetery of the Crucifixion” - a crucifix was erected behind the church in 1833). For visitors, the cemetery opens once a year, on November 1, All Saints Day. The magnificent bronze Gate of Resurrection by Tommaso Gismondi leads here.
