The Saint-Roch Church was built between 1653 and 1722 near the Tuileries Gardens, on the initial plans of Jacques Le Mercier. It was completed by several architects until 1879 including Jules Hardouin-Mansart (Chapel of the Virgin), Robert de Cotte to whom we owe the elegant facade of the rue Saint-Honoré. 126 meters long. With a medieval plan, it is one of the largest in Paris (the building is classified as a historical monument since December 7, 1914).
Unique fact: absence of bell tower resulting from demolition works undertaken in the 19th century during the development of the passage Saint-Roch
The Saint-Roch Church, the Revolution and its aftermath
At the time of the French Revolution, this church was at the center of the fighting between factions, as shown by the facade riddled with impacts. Revolutionary groups, such as the Jacobin Club and the Feuillants Club, used to gather in the cloisters of the rue Saint-Honoré. The confrontations of that time are still visible.
A few steps away, in the Tuileries Palace, the Convention was sitting, feeling threatened by a royalist insurrection. General Napoleon Bonaparte, at the request of Barras, put an end to the rebellion on the 13th of Vendemiaire year IV (October 5, 1795). Indeed, 25,000 royalists were preparing an insurrection in Paris. On this occasion, Bonaparte had under his command a young officer, Joachim Murat, squadron leader, his future brother-in-law, who played a determining role. The cannonade of Saint-Roch - where cannonballs had been replaced by more effective machine-gun fire - scattered the royalist forces, killing three hundred people.
Saint-Roch was then consecrated "Temple of the Genius" by decree of 6 brumaire year VII (27 October 1798).
The interior of the church was not spared either. Systematic looting led to the disappearance of many objects and works of art. Among them was the portrait of one of the founders of the church: Dinocheau. This painting is now in Santa Maria Maggiore in Piedmont, where it is said to be by a certain Giovanni Paolo Feminis.
It was also along this street that the vehicles that took the condemned from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Concorde where they were executed circulated.
In 1815, the church was again ransacked by 5,000 demonstrators protesting against the Church's refusal to give a Christian burial to the actress Françoise Raucourt (or the Raucourt).
Today, the Saint-Roch Church is the parish of the artists
Plundered during the Revolution, the church recovered part of its heritage as well as numerous works of art from other Parisian churches. Still active, it is known as the "parish of artists", because it is the chaplaincy of the artists of the spectacle, by allusion to those who were buried there in the past or whose funerals were celebrated there. It also has a rich collection of works of art.
Recent funerals of artists at Saint-Roch Church
Saint-Roch Church has always been the last resting place of personalities in history
Due to the multiple architectural transformations and especially the sacking of the ossuary during the French Revolution and the Commune, few tombs have survived. However, it is known that many personalities have been buried in the church over the centuries:
- 17th, André Le Nôtre, September 16, 1700, Saint-André chapel, César de Vendôme, October 25, 1664, Pierre Corneille, 1684
- 18th, Françoise Langlois, wife of André Le Nôtre, 1707, René Duguay-Trouin, September 28, 1736. He was re-interred in the cathedral of Saint-Vincent de Saint-Malo, his birthplace, in 1973, François Joseph Paul de Grasse, January 6, 1788, chapel of the Virgin
- and 19th century. Jean Honoré Fragonard, 1806, Mgr Gabriel Cortois de Pressigny, Count of Pressigny, 1823, chapel of the Virgin
Finally, the beautiful mausoleum of François de Créquy, designed by Lebrun and created by Antoine Coysevox, as well as that of the painter Pierre Mignard, were moved from the Jacobins-Saint-Honoré church to Saint-Roch when this church was occupied in 1791 by the Jacobins Club.
The Saint-Roch Church and the arts
Numerous concerts are organized on weekday evenings and Sunday afternoons. Click here to learn more.
It still houses paintings and sculptures from convents destroyed during the Revolution. It is a kind of museum of religious art from the 18th and 19th centuries (see the document published by the City of Paris).
Chapel of Calvary
Choir dedicated to the Virgin and, on its north side, three lateral niches housing respectively a Crucifixion by Jehan Du Seigneur, the altar carved in a mass of rocks dominated by a Christ on the cross by Michel Anguier and a Entombment by Louis Pierre Deseine (1819).
Chapel of the Communion
Bathed in a deliberate semi-darkness, illuminated only by two stained glass windows, it has original religious ornamentation, namely a solar crucifix, an Ark of the Covenant (19th century) and two seven-branched candlesticks in relation to the Temple furniture in Jerusalem. The two stained glass windows represent, on the left, Saint Denys the Areopagite, and on the right, Mgr Affre, archbishop of Paris from 1840 to 1848 and who died on the barricades that year.
Chapel of the Virgin
It has a dome whose vault supports an Assumption painted between 1749 and 1756 by the first painter of the Duke of Orleans, Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre, and restored in 1932.
Its altar, where once stood an Annunciation by Etienne Maurice Falconet, a work that disappeared during the Revolution, has been surmounted since 1805 by the Nativity of Val-de-Grâce (1665) by the sculptor Michel Anguier. Above it is an imposing Gloire Divine by Falconet, whose rays and clouds, dotted with cherubs' heads, descend on the Holy Family. This ensemble is completed by two other works, the Saint Jerome by Lambert-Sigisbert Adam (1752) and an anonymous Saint Barbara (c.1700), on either side of the altar.
Choir
The clergy had their vault under the choir with an entrance protected by a black marble slab. Among the civilians buried here are the sculptors François and Michel Anguier, the poet Pierre Corneille, the garden architect André Le Nôtre, Admiral René Duguay-Trouin, Diderot, the Abbé de l'Épée.
The statue of Saint Roch (1946) in the choir is a work of the sculptor Louis-Aimé Lejeune.
Deambulatory and transept
Nave of Saint-Roch Church
The pulpit of Saint Roch is a baroque work that has kept intact only the lampshade, an immense swirling drapery, raised by the Truth holding a trumpet and lifting the veil of Error. The caryatids, representing the four cardinal virtues, which support the vat are more recent and date from 1942. They are by Gabriel Rispal
Chapel of the Baptismal Font
The two 1853 murals are by Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856).
On the left, St. Philip, one of the first deacons of the Christian community, baptizes by immersion the minister of the Queen of Ethiopia who asked him for baptism.
On the right, St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552), a Jesuit missionary, baptizes by sprinkling those he led to Jesus Christ in India and Japan. He was one of the first companions of Saint Ignatius of Loyola in 1534, in Montmartre.
Chapel of St. John the Baptist
Marble sculpture, "The Baptism of Jesus", by Jean-Baptiste I Lemoyne (1681-1731) and his nephew Jean-Baptiste II Lemoyne. This group comes from the former church of Saint-Jean en Grève destroyed between 1797 and 1800 and was given to the church during the Restoration.
The great organs of Saint-Roch Church
They are the work of Louis-Alexandre Clicquot, Clicquot family, restored by Cavaillé-Coll. They are composed of four manual keyboards and pedalboard, fifty three stops (mechanical traction of the keyboards and stops), and two thousand eight hundred and thirty two pipes.
The association "Les Heures musicales de Saint-Roch" gives regular concerts and promotes the creation of contemporary works.
The choir organ
The instrument is composed of 12 stops, distributed on 2 keyboards and a pedalboard. The transmissions of the stops and the notes are mechanical. The case is classified as a historical monument.
Paintings and stained glass windows
- Auguste Charpentier (1813-1880), works classified as historical monuments:
The Innocence, 1833
The Strength, 1833
Wisdom, 1833
Charity, 1833
Religion, 1833
The Extreme Unction, 1833
The Funeral, 1833
The Holy Women at the Sepulcher, 1850
The Resurrection, 1850
The Divine Law, 1850
- Stained glass windows
"Christ on the Cross," stained glass window in the north aisle of the church of Saint-Roch in Paris by Ferdinand Henri Joseph Mortelèque, 1816, after a design by Régnier, the first known stained glass window made in 19th century Paris
"La Crucifixion", carton by Louis Steinheil (1875) in the Chapel of Compassion;
"Saint John the Baptist" (late 19th century);
"The Death of St. Joseph," Lorin workshops (ca. 1880) in the Calvary Chapel;
"Saint Denis the Areopagite".
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