Church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis

The Church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis was built between 1627 and 1641, right here in the Marais, a short walk from Place des Vosges. It replaced a small chapel that simply couldn't keep up with a growing, bustling Paris.

For a long time, two silver urns hung above the choir, each containing an embalmed royal heart. Louis XIII and Louis XIV, preserved and honored. Then the Revolution arrived, and a painter saw an opportunity. He stole the royal hearts and ground them into his pigment, hoping the mummified remains of kings would give him extraordinary shades of brown. History does not record whether his paintings were particularly impressive.

Victor Hugo had a soft spot for this church too. He set the wedding of Cosette and Marius here in Les Misérables, and his own daughter Léopoldine married here in 1843, the year before she drowned in the Seine. Fiction and tragedy, bound to the same stones.

The Revolution turned the church into an archive, and many treasures disappeared. But since 1887 it has been a protected monument, still holding centuries of stories in its walls.