Basilica of Saint-Denis

Church · Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis, northern suburb)Paris,France

The church where Gothic architecture was invented, in the 1140s, and the burial place of the kings of France for twelve centuries.

The Basilica of Saint-Denis is where Gothic architecture was invented. Go round behind the altar and the chapels open into one another with no dividing walls, so coloured light reaches you from every side at once. Abbot Suger rebuilt the east end of his abbey church in the 1140s and put three things together that had existed separately: the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the buttress outside the wall. Between them these three carried the roof, so the walls no longer had to, and he filled the space with coloured glass. It is also the graveyard of the French monarchy. Kings and queens were buried here for twelve centuries, and about seventy carved figures lie on their tombs, from stiff twelfth-century slabs to Renaissance couples shown naked and dead. In 1793 the Convention had the tombs opened and the bodies thrown into two lime pits outside; the monuments survived because a scholar carted them away and put them on show as works of art. The bones were recovered in 1817 and returned to the crypt, all mixed together. The north spire, taken down in the 1840s, is being rebuilt by hand in a stoneyard beside the church.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The church is free, the tombs are ticketed — Walking into the church costs nothing. The east end, with the curved walk behind the altar, the crypt and the royal tombs, is behind a ticket.
Morning is for the east end — Suger's chapels face east, so the glass behind the altar is lit from outside for the first half of the day and goes flat after that.
Saint-Denis is a working town in its own right — The basilica stands on a market square with an ordinary high street around it, so the walk from the station goes through everyday town life.
A big open market runs beside the church — Saint-Denis holds it three mornings a week, right on the square, and on those mornings the ground around the basilica is full of stalls and shoppers.

Things to do

1
Stand in the curved walkway behind the altar
Go round behind the altar into the curved walk and stop in the middle of it. Turn a slow circle. The chapels open into one another with no dividing walls between them, so coloured light reaches you from every side at once. This is where Gothic architecture began, and the space is smaller than you expect.
2
Find the tomb that shows the king and queen twice, alive and dead
Look for the double tomb of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany. On the top they kneel, crowned and dressed. Underneath, inside the open stone canopy, the same two lie naked and dead, ribs showing, mouths open, with the line of the embalmer's cut carved into the skin.
3
Read the list of royal names on the wall above the bone vault
In the crypt, find the stone plaque above the bone vault and read down the list. It names the kings, queens and princes whose bodies were thrown into the lime pits. Behind the wall lies what was later dug back out of those pits, all of it mixed together, so no name on the stone can be matched to any particular remains.
4
Watch the masons cutting stone for the new spire
You can walk into the stoneyard beside the church and watch the work. Blocks arrive rough, are squared up, and are then carved to shapes copied from the original drawings of the 1840s. You can watch a mason cut a moulding by hand, and see the finished stones stacked in the order they will be lifted up the tower.