Val-de-Grâce (church)

The Val-de-Grâce church exists because of a royal promise. Queen Anne of Austria, after twenty-three years of a childless marriage, pledged to build a magnificent sanctuary if she were granted a son. Following the birth of the future Louis the Fourteenth in 1638, she commissioned this church as a votive offering to the Virgin Mary. The young king even laid the building's cornerstone himself in 1645 at the age of seven.