Saint Séverin, 3, rue des Prêtres Saint-Séverin, Paris
The Church of Saint-Séverin spans over seven centuries of building and rebuilding. It takes its name from Séverin, a 6th-century hermit believed to have lived on the site, and has been altered repeatedly since its first foundation.
The earliest known structure on the site dates to the 11th century, replacing a chapel destroyed by the Vikings in the 9th century. This Romanesque building served as the parish church for the expanding University of Paris. After a fire in 1448, the church was rebuilt in the Flamboyant Gothic style, with intricate stonework, flame-shaped window tracery, and pointed arches. The first three bays of the nave, however, predate this reconstruction and belong to an earlier campaign.
The rebuilding also extended the church to five naves, making room for lateral chapels added in the early 16th century. Behind the altar, a double ambulatory on twisted columns — commonly called the “palm tree” columns — was completed between 1489 and 1495.
The upper windows of the first three bays retain stained glass from the late 14th century, among the oldest in the building. Most other windows were replaced during the 19th-century restoration, which also reorganised substantial portions of the church and its surroundings, adding and removing elements while leaving the Gothic character of the interior broadly intact.
That restoration was directed by Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus (1807–1857), who added a new series of gargoyles and grotesques to the exterior. Though 19th-century in date, these carvings were designed to align with the existing Flamboyant Gothic fabric, their forms echoing the building’s tracery and vertical articulation. The approach reflected the Romantic investment in Gothic imagery characteristic of Lassus and his circle, in which medieval forms were reinterpreted rather than mechanically copied. The gargoyles retain their waterpouting function while the grotesques carry a symbolic, apotropaic charge — the ensemble illustrating how 19th-century restoration practice could combine structural conservation with deliberate historical reinvention.
References
Gray-Durant, D. (2015) Blue Guide Paris. 12th edn. London: Somerset Books
Patrimoine & Histoire. Paris –Église Saint-Séverin à Paris [online]. Available at: https://www.patrimoine-histoire.fr/Patrimoine/Paris/Paris-Saint-Severin.htm (Accessed: 28 April 2024).