Church of Saint-Pierre de Montmartre is arguing for the right to be called the oldest church in Paris to Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It is located behind the facade of Sacre Coeur, as if lost to the eyes of tourists to this magnificent hall. And the church - interesting.

It was built as a church of the abbey of Montmartre - he founded in 1153 together with his son, King Louis VII, Adelaide of Savoy. She became the first abbess here, a year later, he died and was buried here. The phenomenon exclusive - Adelaide of Savoy was the queen, "status" of her ashes should rest in Saint-Denis.

The monastery was an unenviable fate. In 1590, Henry VI, the siege of Paris, took the Montmartre hill. When he lifted the siege, nearly all the nuns went with a group of Huguenots. In 1790, revolutionaries destroyed the monastery, forty-sixth Abbess Louise de Montmorency-Laval was sent to the guillotine in just a few days before Thermidor, which put an end to the terror of the Jacobins.

Of the monastery survived only church. Gone are the days when specially for Saint Pierre de Montmartre great Marc-Antoine Charpentier wrote sacred music. The revolutionaries desecrated the church, arranging here the Temple of Reason. Then some time here was located warehouse.

In 1794 the tower of the church, one of the highest points in Paris, established a system of optical telegraph Chappe brothers. It is this station has received a message about the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.

Holy Mass in the church were resumed only in 1908. During World War II, died vintage stained glass, in 1953, they were replaced by Neo-Gothic stained glass work glassblower and designer Maurice Max-Ingrana. It is believed that the marble pillars inside the church date back to late antiquity, when this place was a temple dedicated to Mars. Very beautiful survived all the wars and revolutions of the bronze gates of the church the work of the Italian Tommaso Dzhismondi. At the gates of the main scenes of the life of the apostle Peter, the patron saint of the temple - from his vocation to the crucifixion of Jesus in Rome.

It adjoins the smallest church in Paris abandoned cemetery Kalver ("Cemetery of the Crucifixion" - in 1833 the church was erected behind the crucifix). For visitors to the cemetery opens once a year, on November 1, All Saints' Day. Lead here magnificent bronze gates of the resurrection of work by Tommaso Dzhismondi.