Saint-Denis
— — the basilica where Gothic first let the light in.
Not only on a wall.
“A working town on the northern edge of Paris, built around the basilica that holds the bones of forty-three kings of France. Abbot Suger rebuilt the choir here in the 1140s with pointed arches and stained glass, and Gothic architecture began. The town around it now is loud, young, and very much alive. from the studio
Saint-Denis, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Saint-Denis sits about 9 km north of central Paris, the seat of the Seine-Saint-Denis department in Île-de-France. The town grew around the Basilica of Saint-Denis, founded over the tomb of the third-century martyr Saint Denis, first bishop of Paris. Today it is one of the largest communes in the Paris metropolitan area, with a population near 113,000, and it hosted the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics at the Stade de France, which stands just north of the basilica.
Between 1135 and 1144, Abbot Suger rebuilt the choir and west front of the abbey with pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and large stained-glass windows. Architectural historians treat this work as the first true Gothic building. The basilica also serves as the royal necropolis of France: forty-three kings, thirty-two queens, and dozens of princes and dignitaries are interred there, from Dagobert I in 639 to Louis XVIII in 1824, beneath some of the finest medieval and Renaissance tomb sculpture in Europe.
The basilica opens daily, with a paid ticket required for the royal tomb crypt. Métro line 13 reaches Basilique de Saint-Denis from central Paris in under thirty minutes. Tuesday and Friday mornings are market days on the Place Jean-Jaurès in front of the basilica, one of the largest open-air markets in Île-de-France. The campaign to rebuild the basilica's north tower, lost to a storm in 1846, is underway and slated for completion later this decade.