Saint-Jean de Montmartre

Stand on the cobbles of Place des Abbesses for a moment. Behind you, the green iron curves of the metro entrance rise from the pavement. In front of you, a wall of warm red brick climbs toward the sky, dotted with small glazed beads that catch the light. On a bright morning they shine a soft turquoise. On a grey afternoon they look almost like wet pebbles. This is Saint-Jean de Montmartre, and it is a far more radical building than it first appears.

At first glance, you might take it for an ordinary brick church with some Art Nouveau decoration. Many passers-by do. They sit at the café tables across the square, drink their coffee, and never look twice. But the brick is only a skin. Underneath it is reinforced concrete, and that made this church one of the boldest experiments in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century. Locals sometimes call it Saint-Jean-des-Briques, Saint John of the Bricks, because the brick is what everyone notices.

The architect was Anatole de Baudot. He trained under two giants of nineteenth-century French architecture. One was Henri Labrouste, known for his iron-framed libraries. The other was Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the restorer of Notre-Dame. Viollet-le-Duc believed that Gothic builders had been rational engineers, not just decorators. They pushed stone as far as it could go. De Baudot took that lesson and asked a new question. What would a Gothic builder do with modern material?

His answer was concrete reinforced with thin steel rods. He worked with an engineer named Paul Cottancin, who had developed his own system of brick and cement bound together with wire. The idea was to make walls and pillars far thinner than stone would ever allow. Construction began in the 1890s and the church was finished in the first years of the twentieth century. Very few large religious buildings anywhere had been built this way before.

And here is the first surprise. Halfway through construction, the city authorities halted the work. The pillars looked impossibly slender. Officials feared the whole structure might collapse onto the worshippers below. There was no familiar rulebook for this kind of building, and the matter went to the courts. For a time, the project's future was uncertain. In the end the experts were satisfied, work resumed, and the church still stands here more than a century later.

Now look again at the façade. The brick is laid in careful patterns, and the arches are pointed, a quiet nod to medieval churches. Around the entrance and up the walls you will see ceramic decoration. These glazed pieces came from the workshop of Alexandre Bigot, a ceramicist famous in Paris for his Art Nouveau tiles and stoneware. Bigot's work also appears on several apartment buildings in the city. Here his ceramics soften the hard geometry of the structure.

The position of the church explains much of its shape. Montmartre is a hill, and rue des Abbesses runs along its slope. The ground falls away beneath the building. De Baudot had to fit a large church onto a sloping, awkward plot. So the church has a lower level beneath the main space. From the square, you see the front of a tall building. The streets on either side show how steeply the land drops.

If the doors are open, step inside. The first thing most visitors feel is lightness. The pillars are thin, almost delicate, and the arches cross overhead in a lattice of concrete ribs. There is none of the heavy mass of a stone cathedral. The space feels open and airy, even modern. Yet the rhythm of arches and vaults still recalls a Gothic nave. It is a medieval idea built with an industrial material.

The second surprise is in those ribs. Look up and follow the arches where they meet. They intersect at angles that would be very difficult in stone. Concrete allowed de Baudot to cross and combine curves freely. Architects and engineering students still come here to study this ceiling. For them, the church is an early chapter in the story of modern construction. It came before the concrete apartment blocks and towers that would later reshape cities everywhere.

Please remember that this is a working parish church. People come here to pray, to light candles, and to attend Mass. Inside, the sounds of the square fade, and the air carries a faint smell of wax and old stone floors. Keep your voice low and move slowly. If a service is taking place, it is best to wait outside or stand quietly at the back.

Step back out into the square and turn around. The metro entrance opposite is one of the Art Nouveau entrances designed by Hector Guimard, with a glass canopy shaped like a fan. Only a few of these canopied entrances survive in Paris. This one was moved here from another station. So within a few steps, you have two faces of Paris around 1900. One is iron and glass. The other is brick and concrete.

A short walk from the church, in a small garden called Square Jehan-Rictus, there is a wall of dark blue tiles. It carries the words I love you written in hundreds of languages. Couples and families stop there for photographs throughout the day. Together with the church and the metro entrance, it makes this little corner of Montmartre a good place to linger, even before you climb toward Sacré-Cœur.

Before you leave, take one last look at the red brick wall. Notice how ordinary it seems now, with pigeons on the ledges and neighbours walking past with their shopping. That ordinariness is the real achievement. A building that once frightened city officials has become part of daily life on the hill. As you walk on up the slope, listen for the café chatter behind you... and think of the thin concrete pillars, still standing quietly inside.