Sainte-Trinité, Paris

The Church of the Holy Trinity anchors the end of the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin with a bell tower that rises sixty-five meters above the street. Designed by Théodore Ballu during the massive urban overhaul under Baron Haussmann, it replaced an older chapel that could no longer contain the neighborhood's growing population. When Olivier Messiaen became the church's organist in nineteen thirty-one, he spent the next sixty years improvising music from the choir loft, composing some of his most famous works right there.