Paroisse Saint-Paul Saint-Louis

The facade of Saint-Paul Saint-Louis rises in three stacked tiers, its heavy stone columns and deep niches anchoring the architecture of the Marais. This was the first Jesuit church in Paris, built by order of King Louis the Thirteenth in sixteen twenty-seven. Cardinal Richelieu laid the first stone, and the building housed the heart of the king, preserved in a gilded reliquary for over a century. During the Revolution, a mob broke into the church specifically to destroy those royal remains.