Église Sainte-Marie-des-Batignolles

Église Sainte-Marie-des-Batignolles stands in the Batignolles district of Paris, in the seventeenth arrondissement. Its neoclassical facade greets you like a Greek temple: a triangular pediment resting on four columns. The area had about six thousand residents when the church began as a small wooden chapel. It went up between 1826 and 1829 under the architect Jacques Molinos. Donations from Charles X and the Duchess of Angoulême funded it.

The district kept growing, and in 1830 Charles X carved the new commune of Batignolles-Monceau out of Clichy-la-Garenne. Paul-Eugène Lequeux added two side chapels in 1839. Archbishop Denys Affre consecrated the church in 1841 and dedicated altars to the Virgin Mary and Saint Vincent de Paul. A legend says a worker found a statuette of the Virgin during the foundation work. The duchess's wishes more likely explain the dedication. During the Paris Commune of 1871, women advocating gender equality met here.

Unlike many churches, this one has no bell tower: its bell, Etiennette, sits in a small campanile built in 1857. The grand organ dates from 1923 and underwent restorations in 1947 and 1994. France has protected the building as a historical monument since 1975. Joseph Roth's novella The Legend of the Holy Drinker, published in 1939, features the church.