Three Reasons to Take a Church Walking Tour

The Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the Orsay: why choose churches over Paris's famous sights? Here are three reasons this "small pilgrimage" through Paris is worth your time.

First, the variety. You'll see Notre-Dame, the setting of Victor Hugo's masterpiece *The Hunchback of Notre-Dame*; the dazzling Sainte-Chapelle, once the chapel of the French royal family; and smaller churches known for healing and sacred relics. Together they show the depth of French Catholicism, and the architecture of different eras comes as a bonus. This walking tour doesn't go inside, and the exteriors alone make for a rewarding outing. Apart from Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Saint-Sulpice and Notre-Dame, the churches are small enough to take in at a glance, so even a quick loop takes only half a day. Each stop is narrated in this order: exterior, interior, related stories, directions. If you're skipping the interiors, use the timestamps to jump from the exterior commentary to the directions.

Second, the art. Catholicism was Europe's spiritual anchor for centuries. There were times when religion held more sway than politics, and times when people begged for deliverance from the Black Death. Churches were where power, display and desperate hope came together, so the era's most famous sculptors and painters left their work in them. Think of Leonardo da Vinci's *The Last Supper*, Michelangelo's *Pietà*, and Rubens's *The Descent from the Cross*, the painting Nello longed to see in *A Dog of Flanders*. On this tour you'll also see works by well-known artists such as Delacroix and Salvator Rosa.

Third, a special link with Asia. In much of Asia, Catholicism arrived with European colonial powers, brought mainly by French and Spanish missionaries; the Philippines is the best-known example. In Joseon Korea, by contrast, Catholic teachings reached the country first as books from China, under the name "Western Learning" (Seohak). People studied them as scholarship, and believers emerged on their own, a rare case. Later, French missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions Society set out from Paris for Korea and other parts of Asia. This tour will let you trace that special connection between Paris and Asia.