Saint-Étienne church, Historic parish church in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.
Saint-Étienne church is a 34.5-metre-long, 15.5-metre-wide stone building in Issy-les-Moulineaux, laid out on a basilica plan with many buttresses and a tall bell tower. Its round-arched windows and interior arcades recall Romanesque practice. Inside are a choir retable framed by woodwork with six 18th- and 19th-century statues, two Renaissance stoups and a Louis XIV baptismal font from the Château des Conti.
A church is documented on this site in 1084, and its Romanesque carved tympanum, now at the end of the north aisle, likely comes from that building. A replacement of 1336 left only the bell "Marie", dated 1618. The present church was consecrated in 1645; shelled during the Commune, it was restored to worship on 9 May 1872 in the presence of Marshal Patrice de Mac Mahon.
The parish is named for Saint Stephen, whose statue stands among six 18th- and 19th-century figures in the choir woodwork, alongside Saint Vincent; both saints have been venerated here for centuries. The current liturgical furnishings — altar, ambo, tabernacle and dove — were made by artist Jean-François Ferraton in 2014. The parish belongs to the BEL cluster with Saint-Bruno and Sainte-Lucie.
The church is open for Mass outside school holidays: Sundays at 10:30, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00, and Mondays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 18:30. The 163-metre underground passage is not open to visitors; the 7th-century vaulted rooms lie beneath the presbytery garden and are likewise not accessible.
The bell named Marie, cast in 1618, is among the oldest in the Hauts-de-Seine department; it survives from the church built in 1336. A 163-metre underground passage also runs beneath the building. Tradition holds that the main portal's wooden leaves were given by the young Louis XIV and his mother Anne of Austria.
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