Church of Saint Eustache, Gothic church in Les Halles, France
The Church of Saint Eustache is a Flamboyant Gothic structure built between 1532 and 1633, with a classical west facade left unfinished. Its exterior length is 105 meters and its vault rises 33.45 meters. Flying buttresses wrap the apse, and the south portal carries a sculpture of a deer with a crucifix in its antlers.
Construction began in 1532 on the site of Paris's medieval marketplace and continued for more than a century before completion. The building was consecrated in 1637, marking a transition from Gothic to Renaissance styles in Parisian architecture.
The church is dedicated to Saint Eustace, a Roman general converted by the vision of a crucifix between a deer's antlers. His symbols, the intertwined letters S and E, a hunting horn and a deer bearing a cross, appear on the gables of both transepts and on pedestals inside. The parish was renamed for him after receiving relics from the Abbey of Saint-Denis.
The building is open during daylight hours for visitors and holds regular worship services throughout the day. Allow time to walk through the interior, as the space extends much further than it first appears from the entrance.
On the south transept, more than 30 metres up, a sundial about 6.5 by 2.5 metres is engraved in the stone, its stylus set just below the rose window where the hour lines meet. Above and left of the south portal, a meridian three metres high marks every quarter hour between 11 am and 1 pm.
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