A Walking Tour Paris

Leave the Basilique de St-Denis metro station and walk down Place du Caquet past the Centre Commercial Basilique and you will come to rue de la Légion D’Honneur. The Basilique de St-Denis will be on your left. This is the sacred burial place of France’s kings (mainly the Capet dynasty, who reigned from the late 10th to early 14th centuries). The Basilica also contains a number of memorials, including one to its founder Dagobert (who died in 638), and others to King Henri II (1559), Queen Catherine de Medicis (1589), King Louis XVI and his Queen Marie-Antoinette.

Consecrated as a cathedral in 1966, it began life as an abbey church in the 7th century, on what was purported to be the burial site of St Denis, the first Bishop of Paris, who was beheaded in Montmartre in 250 CE. He is now the patron saint of France. Abbot Suger, confidante of Kings Louis VI and VII, decided to enlarge the church around 1137 and rebuilt parts of it in a series of innovative new structural and decorative ways that helped create the first Gothic building.

The Basilica’s nave is regarded as the prototype of the Rayonnant style of Gothic and was hugely influential throughout Europe. Replacing the heavy masonry walls of the old church with slender columns allowed plenty of light to enter through the greatly enlarged windows. Developments such as the pointed arch and flying buttresses also reduced the need for massive walls and so freed the interior space of columns and created the sensation of airiness and lightness that was the signature of this stunning new architectural style. Suger’s changes were finished by 1144, and the rest of the church was rebuilt from 1231 onwards in the same beautiful style.

10am–5.15pm Mon–Sat, noon–5.15pm Sun, Oct–Mar (last admission 15 mins
before closing)
Services: 8.30am, 10am Sun
Tel: 01. 48 09 83 54

Despite being the burial place for nearly every French king from the 10th to the 18th century, this was not where they were crowned. Coronations took place in the Cathedral of Reims.