Église Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois

Église Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois stands in Paris’s first arrondissement, directly opposite the Louvre Palace. This medieval Roman Catholic church presents a western portal with apostles, angels, and biblical scenes carved around 1220 to 1230.

A small oratory occupied the site in the fifth century, while the present structure began in the thirteenth century and changed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Romanesque, Rayonnant and Flamboyant Gothic, and Renaissance forms meet across its exterior and interior. The long nave, choir, transept, aisles, chapels, and ambulatory hold paintings, sculptures, and stained glass from several periods. Its history includes service as the Louvre’s parish church from 1608 to 1806, closure during the French Revolution, and the return to Catholic worship in 1801.

Inside, carved wooden seats from 1684 accompany a polychrome wooden statue of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois from the fifteenth century. The original Romanesque bell tower dates from the twelfth century, while Théodore Ballu added another tower in the nineteenth century. The bell Marie rang in 1572 to signal the beginning of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre.