Saint-Étienne-du-Mont

Stand at the top of the hill for a moment. The pavement slopes gently under your feet, and the great dome of the Panthéon fills the sky beside you. Then turn toward the smaller church on its left. Its pale stone front rises in layers, almost like a stack of picture frames. Pigeons settle on the ledges. Students cross the square with backpacks and coffee. This is Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, and it has watched this hilltop for about five hundred years.

The hill itself is the first part of the story. You are on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the highest ground on the Left Bank of the Seine. This is the Latin Quarter, named for the scholars who once studied and argued in Latin here. For centuries, a powerful abbey stood on this summit. The church in front of you was built for the ordinary people of the parish, who needed their own place to pray beside the monks.

Construction began at the end of the fifteenth century and continued for more than a hundred years. That long building period matters, because you can see it in the stone. The lower parts follow the late Gothic style — pointed arches, tall windows, slender ribs. The upper parts and the façade turn toward the Renaissance, the style that brought back columns, triangular pediments, and the calm order of ancient Rome. Look at the front again. Gothic and classical ideas sit on top of each other in one face.

Now look to the right of the façade, at the bell tower. It is slim and a little older than the front, and it stands slightly apart. Above, a small rounded turret crowns the top. From the square, the whole building can look a bit uneven, as if several architects had different ideas. In a sense, they did. Each generation added what it could afford, in the taste of its own day.

Step inside, and let your eyes adjust. The first surprise waits in the middle of the church. A wide stone screen crosses the nave, the long central hall, like a lace bridge. This is a rood screen, called a jubé in French. In medieval churches, these screens separated the clergy at the altar from the people in the nave. Priests read scripture from the top. Most were torn down in later centuries, when the Church wanted worshippers to see the altar clearly.

Here is the fact many visitors miss. This is the only rood screen still standing in a Paris church. It dates from the sixteenth century, and it is far lighter than most. Follow its curves to either side. Two spiral staircases wind up around the pillars, open to the air, with carved stone railings. They look almost too delicate to climb. Stand still and trace one staircase with your eyes, from the floor to the gallery above.

Walk forward along the nave and notice the pillars. They are very tall and thin, and a narrow walkway runs high up between them. The effect is airy and bright, especially on a sunny afternoon. Above you, the vaults meet in carved stone pendants that hang down like drops. Below, the floor carries worn gravestones and inscriptions. Generations of parishioners lie under your feet, and many names have faded under centuries of footsteps.

The church holds a special place in the heart of Paris for one reason above all: Sainte Geneviève, the patron saint of the city. Tradition says she lived in the fifth century and protected Paris from the army of Attila the Hun through prayer. Legend has it that she urged the frightened citizens to stay rather than flee. Whether every detail is true or not, Parisians have turned to her in times of danger for well over a thousand years.

Her relics once rested in the abbey next door. During the French Revolution, in 1793, revolutionaries burned them in public. What survives today is a stone said to come from her original tomb. It now rests here, inside an ornate shrine in a side chapel near the choir. You will often see candles burning around it, and people quietly kneeling. Each January, the parish holds celebrations in her honour, and pilgrims climb the hill to pray.

Two great writers also rest in this church. Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth-century mathematician and religious thinker, is buried here. So is Jean Racine, one of the masters of French tragic drama. Look for the plaques that mark their memory on the walls. There is something moving in this pairing. One man studied probability and the void. The other wrote about passion and fate. Both ended up under the same quiet stone roof.

The church also saw violence. In 1857, the Archbishop of Paris was stabbed to death here during a service, by a priest who had been removed from his duties. It was a shocking crime at the time. Today, almost nothing in the calm interior hints at that day. Turn instead to the carved wooden pulpit in the nave. A large figure of Samson, the strong man of the Bible, holds it up on his back. Look closely at the lion at his feet.

Before you leave, look up toward the entrance wall. The organ sits high above the doors, inside a richly carved wooden case from the seventeenth century. When it plays, the sound fills every corner of the nave. Then look at the windows. Many of them still hold old painted glass, with scenes in deep blues, reds, and golds. In the late afternoon, coloured light falls across the pillars and the floor, and it moves slowly as the sun goes down.

Outside, walk a few steps around the side of the church, onto the rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. Film lovers may recognise the stone steps here. In Woody Allen's film Midnight in Paris, the hero sits on these steps as a clock strikes twelve, and an old car arrives to carry him into the nineteen-twenties. On a quiet evening, the street lamps glow, and it is easy to see why the director chose this corner.

So take a last look at the façade before you go. The Gothic below, the Renaissance above, the tower slightly apart. Behind those doors, a stone bridge from the sixteenth century still crosses the nave, and candles still burn for a saint who protected this city. Listen to the bells, the voices of students, the scrape of chairs at a nearby café. The hill keeps changing around this church. And the church, quietly, stays.