Church of Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre (Eglise Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre) description and photos - France: Paris (Topic)

Church of Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre (Eglise Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre) description and photos - France: Paris. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The title in English is Eglise Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre.

Photo and description

The Church of Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre (Saint John in Montmartre) is very young by Parisian standards - it was consecrated in 1904. In this small church, a revolution took place that made possible the architecture of the 20th century.

At the very end of the 19th century, the architect Anatole de Baudot received an order to design a new church on the hill of Montmartre. Baudot was a student of the famous French restorer-freethinker Eugene Viollet-le-Duc and put forward the project in the spirit of a teacher: the supporting structures of the church are made of reinforced concrete. For the first time in the world, an architect envisioned a reinforced concrete dome, and decided to make the unusually thin columns of the temple out of reinforced hollow bricks (the Cottansen-Baudot method).

The architect was not believed - how can you agree to an obvious adventure? The work was stopped they tried to demolish the unfinished temple. Twice the priest of the neighboring church Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre, Abbot Alex Sobot, saved the project with his authority. Full-scale strength tests (load with sandbags on 7-centimeter-thick reinforced concrete floors) showed that all calculations are correct, the structures have the required margin of safety. Only after that construction was resumed.

The Church in Montmartre became the first building in the world in which reinforced concrete was not only used as load-bearing structures, but also dictated a completely new aesthetic. From the outside, the church looks quite traditional, its Art Nouveau facades are made of bricks (the church even has a second name - Saint-Jean-des-Briques, “Saint John of Brick”). But in the interiors of the church, cast reinforced concrete arches, supporting elements, details of fences, resembling light lace. At the same time, the architect did not try to hide reinforced concrete, but, on the contrary, emphasized its features. It is believed that the aesthetics found by Baudot opened the way for the creations of the great Le Corbusier.

In the church you can see the magnificent stained glass windows by Jacques Galan based on the sketches of Pascal Blanchard. The stained glass windows are dedicated to the life of the inspired author of one of the four Gospels, John the Theologian. Two large paintings at the altar by Alfred Plozo depict the First Miracle of Jesus Christ at Cana of Galilee and the Last Supper. The organ of the church was built by the great organ master Aristide Cavaye-Col.

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Topic: Church of Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre (Eglise Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre) description and photos - France: Paris.