Saint-Séverin church, Paris

A church rebuilt in the fifteenth century

Saint-Séverin stands on rue des Prêtres-Saint-Séverin, a short walk from place Saint-Michel. The name goes back to the hermit Séverin, in the sixth century. By the eleventh century there was a church here that became a parish; in the thirteenth a Gothic one replaced it, with a bell tower that was then the highest of the churches of Paris.

Photo: Mbzt, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The end of the Hundred Years’ War left it nearly destroyed: only the bell tower and three bays survived. It was rebuilt in flamboyant Gothic during the fifteenth century and given five aisles.

The palm grove

The best-known part is the chevet, built between 1489 and 1495. It has a double ambulatory, the walkway that runs round the choir, in which the columns twist like palm trunks around a twisted pillar. The parish calls the arrangement unique in Paris, and the “palm grove” is the name it carries here.

A later change followed. In 1673, Jules Hardouin-Mansart removed three bays of the charnel house to raise the oval Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. The church has been listed as a historic monument since 1862.

Photo: Mbzt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Opening hours and Mass times

Saint-Séverin is a working parish, with Mass every day. According to its website, the church is open Monday to Saturday from 9.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. and on Sunday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. The association Pierres Vivantes lists a tour of the church on the parish home page, on Saturday 10 October at 2.30 p.m.

Getting there in autumn 2026

Saint-Michel – Notre-Dame is about 83 metres from the church. The station’s line 4 platforms are closed until 19 December 2026, but the RER B and C at the same station, Cluny – La Sorbonne and Cité still serve the district.

Getting there

The RER B and C platforms of Saint-Michel – Notre-Dame are about 83 metres away and Cluny – La Sorbonne (line 10) about 103, which is a walk of 1 to 2 minutes by our method. Maubert – Mutualité (line 10) is 300 metres away and Odéon (lines 4 and 10) 326. Cité, on line 4, also remains open while the Saint-Michel platforms of that line are shut.

Visiting around the services

The church is open Monday to Saturday from 9.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. and on Sunday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., according to the parish. On Sundays there are three Masses, at 10.30 a.m., noon and 7 p.m.; from Monday to Saturday there is one at 12.15 p.m., and a second at 7 p.m. from Tuesday to Friday outside school holidays. Since walking round a church during a service is not courteous, the quieter slots fall between those hours.

What to look at inside

• The palm pillars. The double ambulatory has ten double bays, and its pillars branch out like palm trees. One of them is twisted into a spiral, which is the pillar the chevet is organised around.
• The windows of Jean Bazaine. Eight non-figurative windows, made between 1966 and 1970 and evoking the seven sacraments, sit among the older glass. They are modern abstract compositions inside a flamboyant Gothic shell, and the contrast is the point.
• The organ. Alfred Kern of Strasbourg built it, and it was inaugurated in 1963 with 59 stops and mechanical action.
• The bell. The bell called “Macée” was cast in 1412, according to Wikipedia.
• The five aisles. The plan is five naves wide, with doubled side aisles, an arrangement that Wikipedia compares to Notre-Dame.

The old charnel house

The cloister south of the church is the former charnel house, dating from about 1430 and now a garden. According to Wikipedia, the church has kept the site of its cemetery and charnel house almost intact, which is exceptional in Paris. Hardouin-Mansart’s oval chapel of 1673 stands where three of its bays were removed. A charnel house was a covered gallery in which bones were kept after burial; the arcades here still show that plan.

Two dates, two churches

Of the thirteenth-century church, the bell tower and the first three bays of the nave remain. Everything else, including the chevet of 1489–1495, belongs to the second half of the fifteenth century. The façade of stone and the interior therefore speak in two different dates, and the tower is the older half.

Where to sleep nearby

The hotels nearest the church are named in the section below, from the Hôtel Parc Saint-Séverin, 17 metres away, outward. Our list of hotels near Saint-Michel compares the rest.

Combining it with

Distances are measured from the church in a straight line, using the coordinates of our data, with walking times by our method of 80 metres a minute over the distance times 1.3.

Place	Distance	On foot
Rue de la Huchette	137 m	2 min
Shakespeare and Company	172 m	3 min
Cluny Museum	197 m	3 min
Sorbonne	248 m	4 min
Notre-Dame	309 m	5 min
Saint-Étienne-du-Mont	593 m	10 min
Panthéon	656 m	11 min

Five sites of our guides lie within 310 metres of the church, which makes it a good starting point for a walk through the north of the quarter.

Where to stay around it

The Hôtel Parc Saint-Séverin is the nearest, about 17 metres from the church. Then come the Hôtel du Levant, about 80 metres, the Hôtel Henri IV Rive Gauche, 98 metres, the Hôtel Europe Saint Séverin, 112 metres, and the Hôtel Cluny Square, 116 metres. Those distances are as the crow flies, from the church. Compare the whole sector on our hotels near Saint-Michel page, and read next about the neighbouring rue de la Huchette.