Saint-Étienne-du-Mont

Saint-Étienne-du-Mont stands near the top of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. It was rebuilt between 1492 and 1626, and the long campaign shows: a Flamboyant Gothic structure carries Renaissance ornament, and the west front, built between 1610 and 1622, rises in three stacked stages, a carved portal under a classical pediment, a rose window and a high gable. The tympanum, the carved relief above the door, shows the stoning of Saint Stephen.

Inside, the church keeps what no other church in Paris still has: its rood screen. Built in the sixteenth century, it crosses the church between nave and choir, its openwork balustrade reached by spiral stairs. Most rood screens were removed in the eighteenth century; this one remained. Look above its portal for a line from Isaiah, ascende tu qui evangelizas Sion, “go up, you who bring good tidings to Zion”; the photograph of 10 June 2023 records it.

The church also keeps what remains of the cult of Saint Geneviève, patron of Paris. Her relics were burned during the Revolution; the gilded shrine in her chapel holds stones from her first sarcophagus. Blaise Pascal is buried here, and Jean Racine’s remains were brought here when the abbey of Port-Royal des Champs was dismantled.

One photograph from seven of the eight recorded visits, in order, from October 2018 to March 2025: three look at the rood screen, two at the west front, one at the Lady chapel and one at the shrine of Saint Geneviève.