Description of the attraction
The Church of Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre (Saint John in Montmartre) is quite young by Parisian standards - it was consecrated in 1904. In this small temple, a revolution took place that made the architecture of the 20th century possible.
At the very end of the 19th century, the architect Anatole de Baudot received an order to design a new church on the Montmartre hill. Baudot was a student of the famous French restorer-freethinker Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, and he put forward the project in the spirit of a teacher: the supporting structures of the church are made of reinforced concrete. For the first time in the world, the architect provided for a reinforced concrete dome, and decided to make the unusually thin columns of the temple from reinforced hollow bricks (the Cottansen-Bodo method).
They didn't believe the architect - how can you agree to an obvious adventure? The work was stopped, they tried to demolish the unfinished church. Twice the priest of the neighboring church of Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre, Abbot Alex Sobot, saved the project with his authority. Full-scale strength tests (load with sandbags on 7-centimeter-thick reinforced concrete floors) showed that all calculations are correct, the structures have the required margin of safety. Only after that the construction was resumed.
The Church in Montmartre was the first building in the world in which reinforced concrete was not only used as load-bearing structures, but also dictated a completely new aesthetic. From the outside, the church looks quite traditional, its Art Nouveau facades are made of bricks (the church even has a second name - Saint-Jean-des-Briques, “Saint John of Brick”). But in the interiors of the church, cast reinforced concrete arches, supporting elements, details of fences that resemble light lace are widely used. At the same time, the architect did not try to hide reinforced concrete, but, on the contrary, emphasized its features. It is believed that the aesthetics found by Baudot opened the way for the creations of the great Le Corbusier.
In the church you can see the magnificent stained glass windows by Jacques Galan based on sketches by Pascal Blanchard. The stained glass windows are dedicated to the life of the inspired author of one of the four Gospels, John the Theologian. Two large paintings at the altar by Alfred Plozo depict the First Miracle of Jesus Christ in Cana of Galilee and the Last Supper. The organ of the church was built by the great organ master Aristide Cavaye-Col.
