Sainte-Clotilde basilica of Paris * All PYRENEES

The Sainte-Clotilde basilica of Paris (Basilique Sainte-Clotilde de Paris) is a basilica of the Roman Catholic Church located at Maurice-Druon square in the 7th arrondissement of Paris (France), one of the 5 minor basilicas of Paris, raised to this rank by Pope Leo XIII in 1898 in commemoration of the 14th centenary of the baptism of Clovis.

It’s the first example of a church in Paris in the neo-Gothic style.

The church takes its name from Saint Clotilde, the wife of King Clovis I, the first King of the Franks. She is said to have persuaded him to convert to Christianity as a condition of their marriage in 496.

The composer César Franck was organist of the church for thirty years.

The church was constructed between 1846 and 1856 on the site of an earlier Carmelite monastery. The original design was by architect Franz Christian Gau, a German-born French architect and archeologist who made his career in France.

The west front of the church is in the Flamboyant Gothic style; the spires of the two towers reach a height of seventy meters. The facade has three portals in bays with high pointed arches and sculptural decoration Statues on thrones on the west front depict Saint Clotilde and Saint Valere, the Bishop of Treves in the 3rd century, who each played an important part in the early French Christian church.

The interior of the church is 96 meters long and 39 meters wide, the dimensions of small cathedral. It has an abundance of light coming from the stained glass windows high on the walls. The outer aisles are separated from the nave by an arcade of tall classical pillars, which form poionted arches, and branch out into slender colonettes which reach upward to support the vaults of the ceiling.

Like most Gothic cathedrals, the walls of the nave are divided into three horizontal levels; a gallery with high pillars and pointed arches on the ground level; a triforium, or gallery without windows, just above; and stained glass windows filling the walls on the upper level, between the triforum and the vaults.