.jpg)
Église de la Madeleine
Work began at the top of the
Rue Royale, North of Place de la Concorde, in 1734. A fairly run-of-the-mill
Renaissance church was planned.
In 1777, however, the architect died, and
his successor decide to pull down what had been built so far and put up a
Classical Stock Exchange instead.
This project ran into difficulties, and
the plans were altered in turn to suit a Library, a Parliament building, a Court
house, and a Bank.
In 1806 Napoleon had it all pulled down and ran a
competition to design a replacement which would be a Temple to the Glory of the
French Army.
The design which won the competition didn’t suit Napoleon, so
he asked Vignon (one of the judges) to do the job.
Vignon produced the final
design, an enormous Greek Temple surrounded by 52 pillars each 65 feet high.
After the fall of Napoleon, Louis XVIII ordered the builders to carry on with
the job, but to make it a church.
In 1841 the building, almost finished, was
nearly turned into Paris’ first railway-station,
but it was finally
consecrated in 1842 as the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene - La Madeleine.
Inside it’s very cool, rich and highly decorated, all silver and gold.
Under
that ordinary-looking roof there are three domes. The church is now famous for
its music.
