I saw an article in France 24. I would have never thought of it so I’m glad they published it. The article talks about how despite everything being closed, the churches are still open. In Paris there are so many you could probably visit one a day and not visit all of them by the end of lockdown. I wanted to throw this out there for anyone looking for something to do. 


I was raised Catholic, but I’m an atheist, so going into them was never my jam. The smell always reminds me of Sundays sitting on those awful wooden pews, hoping the bread was coming up because it meant 10 more minutes before service was over. In fact in my Paris life I was never really tempted to go in, passing by was good enough for me. Although I have been inside two (Sacre Cœur and Notre Dame). Now that there isn’t anything else to do, visiting a few would probably be a good idea. You’ll get the artwork museum lovers have been missing, as well as the architecture. 


For my Art History I thesis I wrote a 30 page paper on Gothic Architecture, true gothic architecture, which is in the French style. It is a fascinating subject and a thing of beauty. It’s almost incomprehensible to understand how it was built by hand. You can find the first example of the style in Saint Denis, which involves a trip on ligne 13. 

Obviously Notre Dame is another, but I don’t think it’s been opened to the public yet, despite having Christmas Eve mass last year. As a substitute Saint-Eustache is a good one. And of course the beautiful Sainte Chapelle should be seen. 

This also gives you the opportunity to visit the other more obscure ones. There’s one near Belleville that I used to see from my window. It was always brightly lit up at night. I wanted to visit it, it looks quite beautiful, but never found a reason to pop over there.

This is a guide to the churches. In French, but if you open it in Chrome it can be translated.