Grande Mosquée de Paris

Grande Mosquée de Paris stands in the fifth arrondissement, completed in 1926 as the oldest mosque in metropolitan France. It also ranks among the largest in the country and serves as a cultural and religious centre for Muslims nationwide. Moorish Revival architecture shapes the whole complex, modelled on the el-Qaraouyyîn Mosque in Fez. Above it rises a thirty-three-metre minaret that echoes the Al-Zaytuna Mosque in Tunisia.

North African artisans crafted the courtyards and horseshoe arches from traditional materials. The complex covers seven thousand five hundred square metres and holds a prayer room, a madrasa, a library and a conference room. Arab gardens stretch over three thousand five hundred square metres of the grounds. You also find a restaurant, a tea room, a hammam and shops. Up to a thousand people fit inside, and the mosque welcomes women and visitors with disabilities.

The French state funded the building as a gesture of gratitude for the Muslim soldiers of the First World War. President Gaston Doumergue and Sultan Yusef of Morocco inaugurated it together on 16 July 1926. It now holds a place in the supplementary inventory of Historic Monuments and carries the Twentieth Century Patrimony label. In the Second World War it reportedly became a place of resistance, sheltering and supporting Muslims in France.