The basilica of Saint Denis. Trip near Paris, France

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Having booked the hotel in Seine-Saint Denis a common so-called Parisian banlieue inhabited mainly by non from Asia and Africa, we visitatola famous basilica that from 'the city its name, first Gothic basilica francese.Ecco some notes on this jewel archittettonico The basilica of Saint Denis or Saint Dionysius is a famous Gothic building, situated in the town on the outskirts of Paris.

St. Denis was the patron saint of France and, according to legend, the first bishop of Paris. At his place of burial was originally erected a small shrine, until Dagobert I, king of the Franks from 628 to 637, founded the Abbey of Saint Denis, as a Benedictine monastery.

The basilica is a cornerstone of Gothic architecture, and can be considered as the first building built in this style. The Gothic structure of St. Denis was begun in 1136 dall'abate Sugerir in the choir, ambulatory and in front, while the nave and the reconstruction of the upper part of the choir was completed in the thirteenth century by Pierre de Montreuil.

The abbey was also the sanctuary of the kings of France, indeed all the kings from the tenth century to 1789, except three, were buried here, and the abbey also contains some remarkable examples of sepulchral monuments. During the French Revolution, the tombs were desecrated and the remains of kings thrown into mass graves. Most of the tombs was saved from archeology Alexandre Lenoir, who took them as objects for his museum of French monuments.

Napoleon Bonaparte was to reopen the church in 1806. With the first exile of Napoleon the Bourbons returned to power, ordered to search for the remains of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were found January 21 1815 and was buried in the crypt of the basilica. In 1817 he was re-opened the mass grave where they had buried the kings of France, but it was impossible to distinguish the individual remains, which were therefore collected in an ossuary in the crypt, with two slabs of marble that remember the names of monarchs buried.

Louis XVIII, to his death in 1824, was buried in the middle of the crypt, near the tomb of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Were also replaced the funerary monuments transported to the museum of French monuments under the direction of Eugène Viollet le Duc, restorer of the famous Gothic buildings. Was finally carried into the crypt the body of King Louis VII, which had been previously buried nell'abbazia Saint-Pont and whose tomb was not destroyed by the revolutionaries.