Cathedral of Saint Volodymyr the Great

**Exterior**

If you've found the building from the photo, this is Saint Volodymyr the Great. The façade you see is French classical in style and looks like an ordinary neighborhood church. Unlike most churches, it has no dome, because it was originally a monastery chapel. It later served as the chapel of a charity hospital.

The statue above the entrance is not a saint, as at other churches, but Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. Look between the pair of Doric columns on either side of the doorway and find the axe: it's a decoration called the fasces of the lictor, a bundle of rods that symbolized the authority of the French Revolution.

**Interior**

The twist in this church is inside. It's a church you can hardly find anywhere in Paris or elsewhere in Europe, so let's go in. The inside and outside differ so much because this is the cathedral of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which follows the Byzantine rite.

Have you heard of an iconostasis? It's the most essential part of an Eastern church: a wall of icons separating the altar from the congregation. Rows of icons depicting figures in gold and symbolic colors hang in several tiers, and the gold and icons make the interior feel dazzling.

**Directions**

What a unique church. Now we head off again in the direction we came from. See the photos on screen and the in-app map. The estimated walking time is two minutes. If the starting point is Saint Volodymyr, the end of this block is our next stop, Café de Flore. And with a slight exaggeration, about ten more steps will bring you to Les Deux Magots.