Saint-Pierre-de-Montmartre

The church of Saint-Pierre in Rue du Mont- Cenis in Montmartre is a relic of the 12th C Benedictine convent whose last abbess died on the guillotine in 1794. Four black marble columns in the choir and at the west end of the nave have survived from the original Merovingian church built in the seventh century on the site of a Roman temple of Mercury. The present church is mainly Early Gothic; the choir was consecrated in 1147 in presence of the great Catholic reformer Bernard of Clairvaux.