At the end of
the street appears a surprising church tower, actually the highest in Paris.
Half way on
this long street, Rue de Prony, you can zoom on this church tower or, in the
opposite direction, on the rotunda / lodge at one of the entrances to Parc
Monceau, the place where one once had to pay taxes to bring merchandise into the
then smaller Paris (see previous posts about Parc Monceau and about the Wall ofthe Farmers-General).
We are in
an area which used to be farming and hunting ground until the 19th
century, referred to as “Plaine-Monceau”. It then became a very fashionable
area and a lot of “hôtels particuliers” (private mansions) were built here. We
can still see some, today mostly offices. On one street corner – with Rue
Fortuny (see previous post about its remarkable mansions) stands the house
where Edmond Rostand lived and wrote “Cyrano de Bergerac”.
Approaching
the church tower, we cross Avenue de Wagram with the Arch of Triumph in the
horizon (see previous posts) and the Place du Maréchal Juin – with a number of
nice restaurants in its immediate surroundings.
The church,
which is not easy to photograph, is the Sainte Odile. The construction started
before WWII and was completed in 1946. The architecture is of course quite
different from most other Paris churches, very much 1930 and influenced by
byzantine edifices with three cupolas and of course especially the very specific high tower. It’s covered by bricks of the same origin as the Strasbourg
Cathedral, maybe another reference to the Alsace region, of which Sainte Odile
is the patron saint.
The interior
is of course in the same style.
Maybe, the church
architecture comes to its right better during the night?
I’m off to
Sweden again for a week, so this post is preprogrammed.
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