Église Saint-Pierre de Montrouge

The Église Saint-Pierre de Montrouge is a Roman Catholic parish church in Petit-Montrouge, in Paris's fourteenth arrondissement. It occupies a triangular plot between the Avenue du Maine and the Avenue General-Leclerc. Its bell tower faces onto the Place Victor-et-Helene-Basch. The church rose in 1863, during the grand reconstruction of Paris under Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann. The architect, Émile Vaudremer, took his models from early Christian basilicas and Romanesque churches.

You come to it through a Neo-Classical portal with a rounded arch, and the tower rises above it. Inside, the plan follows the basilica model: a nave runs between side aisles behind arcades of columns with Corinthian capitals. The eastern end grows more elaborate: a large transept flanked by small chapels, the axis running on into a further chapel. Paintings, frescoes, sculptures and stained glass by Parisian artists of the period fill the interior, under Emperor Louis-Napoleon's patronage. Columns carry a large ciborium, crowned by a lantern tower. Statues of Saint Louis, Saint Joan of Arc, Saint Denis and Saint Genevieve stand in the transept. The workshop of Gsell and Laurent made the windows in the nineteenth century: geometric grisaille patterns that pull daylight deep inside. Barker built the grand organ in 1868, reworked several times since, and a smaller one serves the choir.

During the Prussian siege of 1870 and 1871 the church served as a hospital and withstood the bombardment. The Paris Commune then closed it and ran it as a workers' club. Paris listed it as a historic monument in 1982, and wheelchair users get in without steps.