Prieuré Saint-Martin-des-Champs

Paris (3e arrondissement)

Sulpicius Severus tells that at the gate of Paris, before a crowd, Martin embraced a leper covered with sores and healed him with a kiss. Parisian tradition long attached to this miracle the sanctuary that bears his name outside the walls, to the north of the city, and archaeology has indeed found there a Merovingian funerary basilica, with its sarcophagi, mentioned as early as 709-710 — without anything allowing it to be linked to the saint's passage. Destroyed by the Northmen during the siege of 885-887, it was raised again by King Henri I, who founded there in 1060, on the eve of his death, a collegiate church dedicated to Martin of Tours, consecrated in 1067; in 1079 Philippe I handed it over to Cluny, and the priory became one of the great houses of the order, with its dozens of dependent priories and its fortified precinct. The choir, raised around 1130-1150 with an ambulatory and radiating chapels, is one of the first in France to announce the Gothic; the refectory of the years 1225-1235, long attributed to Pierre de Montreuil, is a masterpiece of the rayonnant; the nave dates from the middle of the 13th century. Closed in 1790, the priory received in 1798 the Conservatoire des arts et métiers, whose museum opened in 1802: since then one watches Foucault's pendulum swing beneath the vaults of a Cluniac church, and it is the strangest of the sanctuaries of Saint Martin.

Wikipédia — Prieuré Saint-Martin-des-Champs ↗

Getting there : 60 rue Réaumur, Paris 3rd, métro Arts-et-Métiers (lines 3 and 11). The church and the refectory are part of the Musée des Arts et Métiers (admission charge, closed on Monday); the church, with Foucault's pendulum, is the last room of the visit. The Romanesque chevet can be seen free of charge from the rue Saint-Martin.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound