Cathedral sights in Paris

1. A Map

   Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Paris

   • Paris, France
   • Sights › Cathedral

   This is the heart of Paris – so much so that distances from Paris to every part of metropolitan France are measured from place du Parvis Notre Dame, the square in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris. A bronze star across the street from the cathedral’s main entrance marks the exact location of point zéro des routes de France.

   Notre Dame, the most visited unticketed site in Paris, with upwards of 14 million people crossing its threshold a year, is not just a masterpiece of French Gothic architecture; it was also the focus of Catholic Paris for seven centuries.

   Built on a site occupied by earlier churches and, a millennium before that, a Gallo-Roman temple, it…

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2. B Map

   Basilique de St-Denis

   • St Denis, France
   • Sights › Cathedral

   St-Denis Basilica was the burial place for all but a handful of France’s kings and queens from Dagobert I (r 629–39) to Louis XVIII (r 1814–24), constituting one of Europe’s most important collections of funerary sculpture; today the remains of 43 kings and 32 queens repose here. The single-towered basilica, begun around 1136, was the first major structure to be built in the Gothic style, serving as a model for other 12th-century French cathedrals, including the one at Chartres. Features illustrating the transition from Romanesque to Gothic can be seen in the choir and double ambulatory, which are adorned with a number of 12th-century stained-glass windows. The …

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