Saint-Martin-des-Champs Priory
A Merovingian funerary basilica was built on this site around the 6th and 7th centuries and renovated in the Carolingian period. The Royal Priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, Cluny's third daughter, was founded in 1060 and a new building was built on this presumed site of a miracle by Saint Martin. The original plan of the choir probably inspired that of the Basilica of Saint-Denis built a few years later, the church of the Conservatory would constitute the oldest testimony of Parisian Gothic. The abbey was declared a national property in 1790 and since 1798 has housed the new Conservatory of Arts and Crafts created by Abbot Gregory in 1794, whose former abbey church, abandoned for worship, serves as an exhibition room for its museum. The complex was largely refurbished under the July Monarchy and the Second Empire, under the direction of the architect Léon Vaudoyer. The Foucault pendulum has been installed in the choir.
