
Photo by Agence Pierre-Antoine Gatier / P. Voisin
One of the goals of the restoration project is to brighten the church’s murals, dimmed over 1,000 years.
Mar 14, 2018
Photo by Agence Pierre-Antoine Gatier / P. Voisin
The church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés has anchored this Left Bank neighborhood for 1,000 years. The leaders of a $5.7 million restoration effort want to keep it that way.
Originally established during the rule of King Childebert I in the year 543 C.E., the church that dominates the sixth arrondissement neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés is claimed to be the oldest in Paris. It casts a long shadow on some of the city’s most beloved cafés, jazz clubs, and art museums (including the splendid Musée National Eugène Delacroix), and it’s a quick stroll from the former Hôtel d’Alsace, where exiled Oscar Wilde spent his last days in 1900.
The church has endured some hardships in its 15 centuries, including fires and a devastating saltpeter explosion that leveled its Benedictine abbey and cloisters—and the original structure was outright destroyed by the Normans when they ransacked Paris in the year 885. But Pope Alexander III rebuilt Saint-Germain-des-Prés at the top of the 11th century, and that edifice—despite the usual well-intentioned expansions and renovations, as well as a weird stint as a prison during the French Revolution—has stood tall in this neighborhood for 1,000 years. A passel of Frankish royals are entombed here, as is philopospher and mathematician René Descartes, and the church’s stained glass, murals, and stone carvings are some of the most glorious in Europe.
Now, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization called the American Friends for the Preservation of Saint Germain des Prés is working to ensure that this singularly important Parisian church will stand for another thousand years by raising funds for an exhaustive restoration project.
>>Next: How to Save the World’s Landmarks Before They Disappear
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