Église St-Étienne du Mont

Lonely Planet review

The lovely Church of Mount St Stephen, built between 1492 and 1655, contains Paris' only surviving rood screen (1535) separating the chancel from the nave; the rest were removed during the late Renaissance because they prevented the faithful assembled in the nave from seeing the priest celebrate Mass.

In the southeastern corner of the nave, a chapel contains the tomb of Ste-Geneviève, largely destroyed during the Revolution. A highly decorated reliquary nearby contains all that is left of her earthly remains - a finger bone. Ste-Geneviève, patroness of Paris, was born at Nanterre in 422 and turned Attila the Hun away from Paris in AD 451. You can see a likeness of her - ghostly pale and turning her back on the city - high above the Pont de la Tournelle just south of Île St Louis in the 5e. Also of interest in the church is the carved wooden pulpit of 1650, held aloft by a figure of Samson, and the 16th- and 17th-century stained glass. Just inside the entrance, a plaque in the floor marks the spot where a defrocked priest stabbed an archbishop to death in 1857.