Description
La Madeleine is a church in Paris that looks like a Greek temple: a rectangle ringed by 52 Corinthian columns, standing at the end of Rue Royale, a few steps from Place de la Concorde. It is a temple in shape, standing on a raised base.
The first thing to see is the portico itself, with its tall columns and a sculpted pediment, then the bronze doors with reliefs of the Ten Commandments, larger than those of St. Peter's in Rome and inspired by Ghiberti's doors for the Baptistery of Florence. They are by Henri de Triqueti, who was only thirty when he won the commission.
Inside, the single long nave is divided in three bays, each with a dome and circular skylights, covered in colored marble and gold. In the half-dome over the choir, a painting by Jules-Claude Ziegler tells the history of Christianity, with Napoleon signing the Concordat with Pope Pius VII.
The church has a famous organ, played by Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré, who were its organists. Musicians loved it. Chopin's funeral was held here in 1849 with Mozart's Requiem, the women singing behind a black velvet curtain, since the church had never allowed female voices.
In 1837 someone proposed turning La Madeleine into a railroad station. It had already been planned as a library, a ballroom, a market and a temple to Napoleon's army. It took almost eighty years, and several regimes, for it to become a church.
Louis XV laid the first stone in 1763. The Revolution stopped everything. In 1806 Napoleon, on campaign in Poland, picked the design of Pierre-Alexandre Vignon: a "Temple to the Glory of the Grand Army."
After Napoleon fell the temple became a church, dedicated to Mary Magdalene in 1842. Coco Chanel, Joséphine Baker and Johnny Hallyday were mourned here too.
The first thing to see is the portico itself, with its tall columns and a sculpted pediment, then the bronze doors with reliefs of the Ten Commandments, larger than those of St. Peter's in Rome and inspired by Ghiberti's doors for the Baptistery of Florence. They are by Henri de Triqueti, who was only thirty when he won the commission.
Inside, the single long nave is divided in three bays, each with a dome and circular skylights, covered in colored marble and gold. In the half-dome over the choir, a painting by Jules-Claude Ziegler tells the history of Christianity, with Napoleon signing the Concordat with Pope Pius VII.
The church has a famous organ, played by Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré, who were its organists. Musicians loved it. Chopin's funeral was held here in 1849 with Mozart's Requiem, the women singing behind a black velvet curtain, since the church had never allowed female voices.
In 1837 someone proposed turning La Madeleine into a railroad station. It had already been planned as a library, a ballroom, a market and a temple to Napoleon's army. It took almost eighty years, and several regimes, for it to become a church.
Louis XV laid the first stone in 1763. The Revolution stopped everything. In 1806 Napoleon, on campaign in Poland, picked the design of Pierre-Alexandre Vignon: a "Temple to the Glory of the Grand Army."
After Napoleon fell the temple became a church, dedicated to Mary Magdalene in 1842. Coco Chanel, Joséphine Baker and Johnny Hallyday were mourned here too.