Basilica of Saint-Denis

Little is known about the earliest buildings on the site. The first church mentioned in the chronicles was begun in 754 under Pepin the Short and completed under Charlemagne, who was present at its consecration in 775. By 832 the Abbey had been granted a remunerative whaling concession on the Cotentin Peninsula.[9] Most of what is now known about the Carolingian church at St Denis resulted from a lengthy series of excavations begun under the American art historian Sumner McKnight Crosby in 1937.[10] The building was about 60m long, with a monumental westwork, single transepts, a crossing tower and a lengthy eastern apse over a large crypt (parts of which survive). According to one of the Abbey's many foundation myths a leper, who was sleeping in the nearly completed church the night before its planned consecration, witnessed a blaze of light from which Christ, accompanied by St Denis and a host of angels, emerged to conduct the consecration ceremony himself. Before leaving, Christ healed the leper, tearing off his diseased skin to reveal a perfect complexion underneath. A misshapen patch on a marble column was said to be the leper's former skin, which stuck there when Christ discarded it. Having been consecrated by Christ, the fabric of the building was itself regarded as sacred.[11]

Abbot Suger (c. 1081 – 1151), friend and confidant of French kings and Abbot of St Denis from 1122, began work around 1135 on rebuilding and enlarging the abbey to which he had been given as an oblate at the age of 10. In his famous account of the work undertaken during his administration, Suger was careful to explain and justify his decision to rebuild the church, complaining at length about the parlous state of the old structure and its inability to cope with the crowds of pilgrims visiting the shrine of St Denis, particularly

Apse and northern facade, lithography by Felix Benoist

...on special days such as the feast of the blessed Denis [...] when the narrowness of the place forced women to run to the altar on the heads of men as on a pavement with great anguish and confusion.[12]

Suger's fascination with light was not merely aesthetic. Like many French clerics in the 12th century AD, he was a follower of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a 6th-century mystic who equated the slightest reflection or glint with divine light. When renovated, the Saint-Denis basilica included Suger's own words carved in the nave: "For bright is that which is brightly coupled with the bright/and bright is the noble edifice which is pervaded by the new light."[13]

It is important to emphasise that Suger was the patron of the rebuilding of St Denis but not the architect, as was often assumed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.[14] In fact it appears that two distinct architects, or master masons, were involved in the 12th-century changes. Both remain anonymous but their work can be distinguished on stylistic grounds. The first, who was responsible for the initial work at the western end, favoured conventional Romanesque capitals and moulding profiles with rich and individualised detailing. His successor, who completed the western facade and upper stories of the narthex, before going on to build the new choir, displayed a more restrained approach to decorative effects, relying on a simple repertoire of motifs, which may have proved more suitable for the lighter Gothic style that he helped to create.[15]

Tympanum and lintel of the central portal, showing Last Judgement iconography (c. 1135, restored 1839)

Suger began his rebuilding project at the western end of St Denis, demolishing the old Carolingian westwork, with its single, centrally located door. He extended the old nave westwards by an additional four bays and added a massive western narthex, incorporating a new façade and three chapels on the first floor level. This new façade, 34 metres (112 ft) wide and 20 metres (66 ft) deep, has three portals, the central one larger than those either side, reflecting the relative width of the central nave and lateral aisles. This tripartite arrangement was clearly influenced by the late 11th-century façades of the abbey churches of St Etienne and La Trinité, Caen, with which it also shared a three-story elevation and flanking towers. Only the south tower survives; the north tower was dismantled following a tornado which struck in 1846.

The major innovation in the façade at St Denis is the way the unknown architects have chosen to emphasise the divisions between the different parts with massive vertical buttresses separating the three doorways and horizontal string-courses and window arcades clearly marking out the divisions. This clear delineation of parts was to influence subsequent west façade designs as a common theme in the development of Gothic architecture and a marked departure from the Romanesque. The rose window at the centre of the upper story of the west portal was also innovative and influential. Although small circular windows (oculi) within triangular tympana were common on the west facades of Italian Romanesque churches, this was probably the first example of a rose window within a square frame, which was to become a dominant feature of the Gothic facades of northern France (soon to be imitated at Chartres Cathedral and many others).[16] The overall design of the façade has an obvious resemblance to a Roman city gatehouse (an impression strengthened by the buttresses and by the crenellations around the top), which helps to emphasise the traditional notion of great churches as earthly embodiments of the Heavenly City, as described in the Book of Ezekiel.

The tympanum of the portal of the north transept depicts the martyrdom of St Denis.

Some of Montfaucon's drawings of the Old Testament jamb figures from the west façade (destroyed 1771)

The many influential features of the new façade include the tall, thin statues of Old Testament prophets and kings attached to columns (jamb figures) flanking the portals (destroyed in 1771 but recorded in Montfaucon's drawings). These were also adopted at the cathedrals of Paris and Chartres, constructed a few years later, and became a feature of almost every Gothic portal thereafter. Above the doorways, the central tympanum was carved with Christ in Majesty displaying his wounds with the dead emerging from their tombs below. Scenes from the martyrdom of St Denis were carved above the south (right hand) portal, while above the north portal was a mosaic (lost), even though this was, as Suger put it 'contrary to the modern custom'. Of the original sculpture, very little remains, most of what is now visible being the result of rather clumsy restoration work in 1839.[17] Some fragments of the original sculptures survive in the collection of the Musée de Cluny. The portals themselves were sealed by gilded bronze doors, ornamented with scenes from Christ's Passion and clearly recording Suger's patronage with the following inscription;

For the glory of the church which nurtured and raised him, Suger strove for the glory of the church, Sharing with you what is yours, oh martyr Denis. He prays that by your prayers he should become a sharer in Paradise. The year when it was consecrated was the one thousand, one hundred and fortieth year of the Word.[18]

On the lintel below the great tympanum showing the Last Judgement, beneath a carved figure of the kneeling Abbot, was inscribed the more modest plea;

Receive, stern Judge, the prayers of your Suger, Let me be mercifully numbered among your sheep.

Suger's western extension was completed in 1140 and the three new chapels in the narthex were consecrated on 9 June of that year.

The choir

On completion of the west front, Abbot Suger moved on to the reconstruction of the eastern end, leaving the Carolingian nave in use. He wanted a choir (chancel) that would be suffused with light. To achieve his aims, Suger's masons drew on the several new elements which evolved or had been introduced to Romanesque architecture: the pointed arch, the rib vault, the ambulatory with radiating chapels, the clustered columns supporting ribs springing in different directions and the flying buttresses which enabled the insertion of large clerestory windows.

It was the first time that these features had all been drawn together, and the style evolved radically from the previous Romanesque architecture by the lightness of the structure and the unusually large size of the stained glass windows.

The nave

The new structure was finished and dedicated on 11 June 1144, in the presence of the King.[19] The Abbey of St Denis thus became the prototype for further building in the royal domain of northern France. Through the rule of the Angevin dynasty, the style was introduced to England and spread throughout France, the Low Countries, Germany, Spain, northern Italy and Sicily.[20][21]

The glazed triforium of Saint-Denis is a notable feature of Rayonnant Gothic.

Plan of the Valois Mortuary Chapel

Surviving fragments of Germain Pilon's Resurrection (1580s), commissioned by Catherine de' Medici for the Valois Chapel complex

Rayonnant Gothic choir of St Denis

In 1231, Abbot Odo Clement began work on the rebuilding of the Carolingian nave, which remained sandwiched incongruously between Suger's Gothic works to the east and west. Both the nave and the upper parts of Suger's choir were replaced in the Rayonnant Gothic style. From the start it appears that Abbot Odo, with the approval of the Regent Blanche of Castile and her son, the young King Louis IX, planned for the new nave and its large crossing to have a much clearer focus as the French 'royal necropolis'. That plan was fulfilled in 1264 when the bones of 16 former kings and queens were relocated to new tombs arranged around the crossing, eight Carolingian monarchs to the south and eight Capetians to the north.[22] These tombs, featuring lifelike carved recumbent effigies or gisants lying on raised bases, were badly damaged during the French revolution though all but two were subsequently restored by Viollet le Duc in 1860.

The dark Romanesque nave, with its thick walls and small window-openings, was rebuilt using the very latest techniques, in what is now known as Rayonnant Gothic. This new style, which differed from Suger's earlier works as much as they had differed from their Romanesque precursors, reduced the wall area to an absolute minimum. Solid masonry was replaced with vast window openings filled with brilliant stained glass (all destroyed in the Revolution) and interrupted only by the most slender of bar tracery—not only in the clerestory but also, perhaps for the first time, in the normally dark triforium level. The upper facades of the two much-enlarged transepts were filled with two spectacular 12m-wide rose windows.[23] As with Suger's earlier rebuilding work, the identity of the architect or master mason remains unknown. Although often attributed to Pierre de Montreuil, the only evidence for his involvement is an unrelated document of 1247 which refers to him as 'a mason from Saint-Denis'.[24]

A plan of circa 1700 by Félibien shows the Valois Chapel, a large mortuary chapel in the form of a domed colonnaded "rotunda", adjoining the north transept of the basilica and containing the tomb of the Valois.[25]

Due to its connections to the French monarchy and proximity to Paris, the abbey of Saint-Denis was a prime target of revolutionary vandalism. The medieval monastic buildings were demolished in 1792. Although the church itself was left standing, it was deconsecrated, its treasury confiscated and its reliquaries and liturgical furniture melted down for their metallic value (although some objects, including a chalice and aquamanile donated to the abbey in Suger’s time, were successfully hidden and survive to this day) and the royal tombs desecrated. The jamb figures of the façade representing Old Testament royalty, mistakenly identified as images of royal French kings and queens, were removed from the portals and the tympana sculpture defaced. The tombs and effigies were relocated to the Musée des Monuments Français by Alexandre Lenoir in 1798.

The church was reconsecrated by Napoléon in 1806 and the tomb sculptures returned to Saint-Denis after the restoration of the monarchy. The church, including the architectural sculpture and stained glass windows (of which very little medieval glass survives) was heavily restored in the mid-nineteenth century by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the same architect responsible for the restoration of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. The present location of the tomb effigies does not correspond to their medieval locations.[26]

In the early 1840s, cracks appeared in the north tower's masonry following several extreme weather events. A violent storm on 19 August 1845, notable for spawning a tornado, proved critical, and the tower's walls were soon found to have flexed and become dangerously unstable. With François Debret's reconstructive works, carried out after an 1837 lightning strike, proving inadequate, in February 1846 the authorities decided to "temporarily" dismantle the north tower to avoid a catastrophic collapse, with the stones stored for later reconstruction.[27]

In December 2016, 170 years after the North Tower's dismantlement and following several false starts, the Ministry of Culture again proposed its reconstruction after concluding it was technically feasible—albeit without public funding.[28] An association, Suivez la flèche ("Follow the Spire"), chaired by Patrick Braouezec, has since been established to support the reconstruction, with the aim of raising the necessary funds by opening the reconstruction works to the general public, along the model of the Guédelon Castle. In March 2018 the culture ministry signed an accord with the association, officially launching the reconstruction project, with works expected to commence in May 2020.[29][5]

Memorial to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, sculptures (1830) by Edme Gaulle and Pierre Petitot

The bodies of the beheaded King Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette of Austria, and his sister Madame Élisabeth were not initially buried in Saint-Denis, but rather in the churchyard of the Madeleine, where they were covered with quicklime. The body of the Dauphin, who died of illness and neglect at the hands of his revolutionary captors, was buried in an unmarked grave in a Parisian churchyard near the Temple. During Napoleon's exile in Elba, the restored Bourbons ordered a search for the corpses of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The few remains, a few bones that were presumably the king's and a clump of greyish matter containing a lady's garter, were found on 21 January 1815, brought to Saint-Denis and buried in the new Bourbon crypt.

King Louis XVIII, upon his death in 1824, was buried in the center of the crypt, near the graves of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The coffins of royal family members who died between 1815 and 1830 were also placed in the vaults. Under the direction of architect Viollet-le-Duc, famous for his work on Notre-Dame de Paris, church monuments that had been taken to the Museum of French Monuments were returned to the church. The corpse of King Louis VII, who had been buried at Barbeau Abbey and whose tomb had not been touched by the revolutionaries, was brought to Saint-Denis and buried in the crypt. In 2004, the mummified heart of the Dauphin, the boy who would have been Louis XVII, was sealed into the wall of the crypt.

The Cavaillé-Coll organ of the Cathedral-Basilica of Saint-Denis

The organ of the Basilica of Saint-Denis was the first organ built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1841, when he was 23 years old. It contains numerous innovations opening the romantic area, in particular the very first Barker lever. With 3 manuals and pedals, it is protected by the Monument historique label. It was restored in 1901 by Charles Mutin, and between 1983 and 1987 by Jean-Loup Boisseau and Bertrand Cattiaux. Pierre Pincemaille, sole titular organist for 30 years (between 1987 and 2018), held many recitals (between 1989 and 1995, then between 2014 and 2017), and recorded 8 CDs with this instrument.

In March, 2019 an unknown intruder damaged the organ, causing extensive damage to the pump motor and doors leading to the internal area of the organ, as well as to a nearby stained glass window.[32]

The cathedral contains a huge church treasure, mainly constituted by the Abbot Suger. It contains crowns (Charlemagne, Saint Louis, Henry IV of France), cross and liturgic objects.

All but three of the Kings of France were buried in the basilica, as well as a few other monarchs. The remains of the earlier monarchs were removed from the destroyed Abbey of St Genevieve. Some of the most prominent of these are:

• Clovis I (466–511)
• Childebert I (496–558)
• Aregund (515/520–580)
• Fredegund (third wife of Chilperic I), (died 597)
• Dagobert I (603–639)
• Clovis II (634–657)
• Charles Martel (686–741)
• Pepin the Short (714–768) and his wife, Bertrada of Laon (born 710–727, died 783)
• Carloman I (751–771)
• Charles the Bald (823–877) (his brass monument was melted down during the Revolution) and his first wife, Ermentrude of Orléans (823–869)
• Carloman II (866–884)
• Robert II of France (972–1031) and his third wife, Constance of Arles (986–1032)
• Henry I of France (1008–1060)
• Louis VI of France (1081–1137)
• Louis VII of France (1120–1180) and his second wife, Constance of Castile (1140–1160)
• Philip II of France (1165–1223)
• St. Louis IX of France (1214–1270)
• Charles I of Naples (1227–1285), an effigy covers his heart burial
• Philip III of France (1245–1285) and his first wife, Isabella of Aragon, Queen of France (1248–1271)
• Philip IV of France (1268–1314)
• Leo V, King of Armenia (1342–1393)
• Charles VII, King of France (1403–1461)
• Charles VIII, King of France (1470–1498)
• Louis XII of France (1462–1515)
• Francis I of France (1494–1547)
• Henry II (1519–1559) and Catherine de' Medici (1519–1589)
• Francis II (1544–1560)
• Charles IX (1550–1574) (no monument)
• Henry III (1551–1589), also King of Poland (heart burial monument)
• Henry IV (1553–1610)
• Louis XIII (1601–1643)
• Louis XIV (1638–1715)
• Louis XV (1710–1774),
• Louis XVI (1754–1793) and Marie Antoinette (1755–1793)
• Louis XVII (1785–1795) (only his heart; his body was dumped into a mass grave)
• Louis XVIII (1755–1824)

• Blanche of France (daughter of Philip IV)
• Nicolas Henri, Duke of Orléans (1607–1611), son of Henry IV
• Gaston, Duke of Orléans (1608–1660), son of Henry IV
  • Marie de Bourbon, Duchess of Montpensier (1605–1627), wife of Gaston
  • Marguerite of Lorraine (1615–1672), Duchess of Orléans and second wife of Gaston
  • Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans (1627–1693), la Grande Mademoiselle
  • Marguerite Louise d'Orléans (1645–1721), Grand Duchess of Tuscany
  • Jean Gaston d'Orléans (1650–1652), Duke of Valois
  • Marie Anne d'Orléans (1652–1656), Mademoiselle de Chartres
• Henrietta Maria of France (1609–1669), wife of Charles I of Scotland and England
• Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (1640–1701), brother of Louis XIV
  • Princess Henrietta of England (1644–1670), first wife of Philippe
  • Elisabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate (1652–1722), second wife of Philippe
• Maria Theresa of Spain (1638–1683), consort of Louis XIV
  • Louis of France (1661–1711), le Grand Dauphin
  • Maria Anna Victoria of Bavaria (1660–1690), Dauphin of France, wife of Louis
  • Princess Anne Élisabeth of France (1662), daughter of Louis XIV
  • Princess Marie Anne of France (1664), daughter of Louis XIV
  • Marie Thérèse of France (1667–1672), daughter of Louis XIV
  • Philippe Charles, Duke of Anjou (1668–1671), Duke of Anjou, son of Louis XIV
  • Louis François of France (1672), Duke of Anjou, son of Louis XIV
• Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (1674–1723), Regent of France
• Louis of France (1682–1712), Duke of Burgundy
  • Marie Adélaïde of Savoy (1685–1712), Duchess of Burgundy
  • Louis of France (1704–1705), Duke of Brittany
  • Louis of France (1707–1712), Duke of Brittany
• Charles of France (1686–1714), Duke of Berry
  • Marie Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans (1695–1719), Duchess of Berry
  • Na (not baptized) d'Alençon (1711)
  • Charles d'Alençon(1713) Duke of Alençon
  • Marie Louise Élisabeth d'Alençon (1714)
• Marie Leszczyńska (1703–1768), consort of Louis XV
  • Louise Élisabeth of France (1727–1759), Duchess of Parma
  • Henriette of France (1727–1752), daughter of Louis XV and twin of the above
  • Louise of France (1728–1733), daughter of Louis XV
  • Louis of France (1729–1765), Dauphin of France
    • Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain (1726–1746), first wife of above
    • Maria Josepha of Saxony (1731–1767), second wife of Louis
  • Philippe of France (1730–1733), Duke of Anjou
  • Princess Marie Adélaïde of France (1732–1800), daughter of Louis XV
  • Princess Victoire of France (1733–1799), daughter of Louis XV
  • Princess Sophie of France (1734–1782), daughter of Louis XV
  • Princess Louise of France (1737–1787), daughter of Louis XV,
  • Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France (1781–1789), first son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
  • Princess Sophie Hélène Béatrice of France (1786–1787), second daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
• Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne (1611–1675), Maréchal General de France.
• Anne of Brittany, Duchess of Brittany (1477–1514), wife of Charles VIII and Louis XII.