Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Belleville: The Village Church
Why is it significant?
Stop on the pavement across from the church and follow its two pointed spires up into the sky. Lacy stonework, tall arched windows, a great rose above the door... it looks like a cathedral from the Middle Ages that has wandered up a working-class hill.
Key Facts
| Place | Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Belleville: The Village Church |
|---|---|
| Address | 139 Rue de Belleville, 75019 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.87570, 2.38930 |
| Part of Walk | Rebel Hill: Buttes-Chaumont, Belleville & the Secrets of Père-Lachaise in Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop on the pavement across from the church and follow its two pointed spires up into the sky. Lacy stonework, tall arched windows, a great rose above the door... it looks like a cathedral from the Middle Ages that has wandered up a working-class hill. In fact it is only about thirty years older than the Eiffel Tower.
Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Belleville was built between 1854 and 1859 by Jean-Baptiste Lassus, the architect who was restoring Notre-Dame with Viollet-le-Duc at the same time. It was one of the very first neo-Gothic churches in Paris, a deliberate return to the style of the great cathedrals. Lassus died before it was finished, and he never saw his spires rise over the village.
And yes, it was a village. Until 1860 Belleville was not part of Paris at all. The city ended at the tax wall at the bottom of this hill, and everything that came into Paris, wine above all, was taxed at the gates. So on Sundays Parisians climbed up here, outside the wall, to drink cheap untaxed wine in the open-air taverns and dance halls that covered the slopes. After the carnival, on Ash Wednesday morning, crowds of masked, exhausted, drunken revellers came stumbling back down the hill into the city in a famous procession called the Descent of the Courtille.
On the 1st of January 1860, Paris swallowed its villages and Belleville was annexed. But the city could not resist splitting it in two. Look at the street signs: the Rue de Belleville is the frontier. The side where the church stands is in the nineteenth arrondissement, the opposite pavement is in the twentieth. Belleville was cut down the middle, and it is often said that this was a deliberate way to divide a rebellious population.
It certainly was rebellious. Belleville voted red, built barricades and gave the Commune many of its fighters. Now start walking downhill along the Rue de Belleville, on the twentieth arrondissement side, and keep an eye on the doorways... one of them claims to have seen the birth of a legend.