Tour Saint-Jacques

The Tour Saint-Jacques stands as a lonely, ornate gothic tower detached from any church. Its walls display intricate stone carvings of winged symbols representing the four evangelists, topped by a statue of Saint James. This structure is the sole remnant of the Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, which was demolished during the French Revolution. Blaise Pascal climbed these stairs in sixteen forty-eight to conduct his famous barometric experiments, measuring the weight of the air at different altitudes to prove the existence of a vacuum.