Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Belleville, Gothic Revival church in 19th arrondissement, France

The Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Belleville is a neo-Gothic church at 139 rue de Belleville in Paris's 19th arrondissement. Its light beige stone facade has two 57-metre spires flanking a central rose window above three recessed portals. Inside, a five-bay nave with side aisles and eight lateral chapels leads to a transept and a choir with ambulatory; pale stone columns support ribbed vaults, and a large circular chandelier hangs from the 19-metre-high nave vault.

A chapel was granted to Belleville in 1543 and built in 1548; a first Saint-Jean-Baptiste church followed in 1635, and the parish became independent only in 1802. The present church was begun in 1854, its first stone blessed by Archbishop Sibour and laid by Baron Haussmann, and consecrated on 11 August 1859 by Cardinal Morlot. Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus designed it; after his death in 1857 his pupil Casimir Truchy took over. Belleville was annexed to Paris in 1860.

The rose window of the facade, made by Auguste de Martel in 1863 from a cartoon by Louis Steinheil, shows the Choir of Angels and the Immaculate Virgin. The three portals carry reliefs by Aimé-Napoléon Perrey (1858): scenes from the life of John the Baptist and Christ as Judge in the centre, the prophets Isaiah and Malachi on the left, and the imprisonment of John on the right. The hinges of the portals were forged by the ironsmith Pierre Boulanger.

The church stands at 139 rue de Belleville, where the street widens at its junction with rue du Jourdain; the facade faces this open corner. Métro Jourdain (line 11) stops a short walk away, and Place des Fêtes (lines 7 bis and 11) is also nearby. The main portal opens under the central rose window, between the two spires.

Édith Piaf was baptised in this church on 16 December 1917, at the age of two. The register entry ties the building to a singer born in Belleville in 1915, whose childhood in the neighbourhood is otherwise little documented in the church itself.