Saint-Eustache: The Belly of Paris's Cathedral
Why is it significant?
Before you go in, look at the giant stone head lying on its side on the square, a hand cupped to its ear. It is called L'Écoute, Listening, by Henri de Miller, from 1986. Behind it rises a church so huge and so oddly built that people often mistake it for a cathedral.
Key Facts
| Place | Saint-Eustache: The Belly of Paris's Cathedral |
|---|---|
| Address | 2 Impasse Saint-Eustache, 75001 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.86340, 2.34510 |
| Part of Walk | Glass Roofs and Royal Secrets: From the Louvre to the Covered Passages of Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Before you go in, look at the giant stone head lying on its side on the square, a hand cupped to its ear. It is called L'Écoute, Listening, by Henri de Miller, from 1986. Behind it rises a church so huge and so oddly built that people often mistake it for a cathedral.
Saint-Eustache was begun in 1532 and took a hundred years to finish. Its bones are Gothic, with flying buttresses and soaring vaults like Notre-Dame. But its skin is Renaissance: Corinthian columns, round arches, classical mouldings. Architects have argued about it ever since. Some call it a masterpiece of transition, others a Gothic cathedral wearing an Italian costume.
This was the parish of the market of Les Halles, the belly of Paris as Émile Zola called it, and the church was rich and well connected. Molière was baptised here. So were Cardinal Richelieu and the future Madame de Pompadour. Young Louis the Fourteenth made his first communion here, and in 1778 the mother of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who died while visiting Paris with her son, had her funeral in this church.
Saint-Eustache is above all a church of music. Its great organ, with around eight thousand pipes, is often called the largest in France, and Hector Berlioz conducted the first performance of his Te Deum here in 1855 with hundreds of singers. The composer Jean-Philippe Rameau is buried in this church. Even today, organ recitals fill the nave on Sunday afternoons, and the sound rolls around those Gothic vaults like weather.
And in a side chapel, almost hidden, you can find something nobody expects: a white-gold altarpiece by Keith Haring, The Life of Christ, one of the last works he finished before his death in 1990. The New York street artist, here among the saints and the incense. Now head west along the Rue Coquillière and up towards a perfectly round royal square.