| There are a number of illustrations and photographs
of St. Julien from the 19th century on, but almost none dating from earlier times.
The few examples that exist are very small illustrations found in vol
d'oiseau (birds-eye view) maps of Paris from the 16th-18th centuries, in which the
buildings, bridges, and other features are drawn to appear three-dimensional. Most of
these maps are oriented so that west is at the bottom and the western
façades of the buildings face the viewer. The maps
differ in style and the amount of detail shown. Generally speaking, the
better-known Paris landmarks such as the Cathedral of Notre-Dame are rendered
in detail and are easily recognizable, while smaller, less-important monuments
are shown in a more simplified manner, and ordinary structures are represented in a
generic way. For that reason, the illustrations
of St. Julien in these maps cannot be considered as accurate representations of
what the church originally looked like, but they are interesting nonetheless. The majority of the maps depict St. Julien with a spire, and some historians see this as proof that the church used to have one. On the other hand, it is possible that the mapmakers might have added a spire to identify St. Julien as a church, even if the spire did not actually exist. And since some maps are copies or adaptations of earlier ones, the copies may simply repeat the architectural details of the original they were based upon. You may also note that in some of the plans a structure appears to be attached to the right (south) side of the church. I believe this may represent the Chapel of St. Blaise and St. Louis, a separate structure which actually stood further to the south. |
| Detail from the Grande Gouache, depicting the City of Paris, ca. 1540. This plan is a copy, executed in gouache, of an earlier map created between 1524-29, which no longer exists. The original Grand Gouache itself was destroyed by a fire in 1871, but fortunately, photographic prints of the entire plan and some partial copies still survive. St. Julien and the Chapel of St. Blaise are labeled with little banners and are depicted as separate buildings. The church has a small spire over the east end, while the chapel appears to have a round tower. The chapel seems to be almost as large as the church and stands at an angle to it, although in reality, the chapel was much smaller than St. Julien and stood parallel to the church. The west end of St. Julien has an arched portal, and above it, three windows of approximately the same size, with the middle window positioned higher than the other two. Some small houses stand between the church and the street (some of which are partly obscured by a banner). |
| Detail of the Plan de Olivier Truschet & Germain Hoyau, known as the Plan de Bâle, woodcut, ca. 1552. (©1997, The Paris Pages. Used with permission). St. Julien is near the lower right of the image and is labeled "S. Ivlien". In this map, the church stands on the left (north) side of the block which belonged to the medieval Priory of St. Julien. (In reality, it stood further to the south). The buildings that once stood in front of the church and separated it from the street are not shown here. Instead, the church appears to front directly onto the rue St. Julien le Pauvre. Note the spire over the east end, the pointed arch of the portal, and the tiny round window above it. |
| Detail of the Plan de St. Victor, copper plate engraving, 1555. This plan was named for the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris, where the only known copy was preserved up to the time of the French Revolution. As in the Plan de Bâle above, St. Julien has a Gothic portal with a single round window above, but no spire. The church sits well behind the row of buildings along the rue St. Julien le Pauvre. A smaller structure to the south might represent the Chapel of St. Blaise, although it extends a bit farther west than the chapel actually did. A row of houses completely separates the church from the street. |
| Detail of the Plan de Georges Braun, copper plate engraving, 1572. This map was engraved in 1570 and published in Cologne in 1572, in a work edited by Georges Braun, called Civitates orbis terranum. It represents Paris as it looked in the 1520's. St. Julien is on the right side of the image, about halfway down. In this map, the church stands near the right (south) side of the block, and the buildings which stood in front of it are shown. Again, the arch of the portal and a small round window above it can be seen, but no spire is visible. |
| Detail of the Plan de François Belleforest, colored wood engraving, 1575. (©1997, The Paris Pages. Used with permission). The enclosure occupied by the priory is located a little less than halfway up the right side of the image. None of the buildings in the area where St. Julien stood are marked with a cross, let alone a spire, so it is difficult to guess which one is supposed to represent the church, possibly the long, narrow structure in the center with two narrow windows near the peak of its gable end. Of course it is also possible that the mapmaker filled the block with generic buildings, either because he did not know the church existed or did not think it important enough to include. |
| Detail of the Plan de Léonard Gaultier, engraving, 1607. This small plan is more like a view of Paris than an actual map, and it was used as a frontispiece in a book. It is also unusual because it shows Paris viewed from the south rather than the west. For the first time, we see St. Julien in a side view with a bit of the west end showing (see the lower right corner of the picture above). The church's most prominant feature is the large spire, which is located in the middle of the roof, instead of on the east end. It has a "coq gaulois" (Gallic rooster) on top instead of a cross. |
| Detail of the Plan de Quesnel, engraving, 1609. Here St. Julien is shown with a spire on the east end, but instead of being centered over the peak, the spire sits lower down and on the southern slope of the roof. There are some strong indications that the monks of St. Julien originally planned to build a bell tower above the chapel of the south aisle, and a small stair tower to provide access to it was actually built on the south side of the church, so it is interesting to see a spire placed in this southern position on the Plan de Quesnel. The west front of the church is similar to what we saw on the Grand Gouache, with a small arched doorway surmounted by three small windows, and the central window slightly above the others. Here the top window looks to be larger than the other two. The smaller building south of the church with the cross on the east end is clearly meant to be the Chapel of St. Blaise and St. Louis. |
| Detail of the Plan de Mathieu Merian, copper plate engraving, 1615. A tall spire is shown over the east end, and on the west front, obscured by cross-hatched shading, there looks to be a large Gothic window with stone tracery. The structure attached to the right side of the church, which has a large Gothic window of its own, likely represents the Chapel of St. Blaise and St. Louis, which was actually a much smaller, separate building that stood further to the south. A wall with an arched opening separates church and chapel from the street. |
| Detail of the Plan de Charles Visscher, engraving, 1618. This plan is considered to be a copy of the Merian Plan shown above. Certainly there are many similarities in the depiction of St. Julien, including the spire over the east end, the big Gothic window, the arched doorway in the wall, and the chapel attached to the right side. |
| Detail of the Plan de Melchior Tavernier, engraving, 1630. Tavernier's plan is an updated copy of Merian's. Overall, the depiction of St. Julien has not changed significantly. The same structure is shown attached to the right side of the church, as well as the spire over the east end. |
| Detail of the Plan de Jacques Gomboust, engraving, 1652. This map is the first to depart from the all-pictorial style of earlier Paris maps. Jacques Gomboust was the Engineer of King Louis XIII, and his plan of Paris was made, by royal command, according to the rules of geometry, excepting the monuments. Thus, the important monuments are still shown in elevation, while all the rest is flat, like a modern street map. St. Julien, the Chapel of St. Blaise, and another building with an illegible name (perhaps one of the old colleges of the University of Paris), are the only structures shown on their block. The images are about as difficult to read as the lettering, but the church clearly has a spire over the middle of the nave, and there is a courtyard represented by a blank area in front of the church and along one side. The Chapel of St. Blaise is incorrectly placed to the east of St. Julien--it was actually located south of the church. A narrow alley is shown leading from the rue Galande to the chapel's west end. The chapel actually had an entrance there, set at right angles to the nave, and a narrow passageway connected it to the rue Galande. |
| Detail of the Plan de Jean de la Caille, engraving, 1714. This plan was published as an atlas, consisting of 22 plates representing the 20 "quartiers" of Paris. The engraving was done by several different people, and the plates vary in scale, orientation, and quality of execution. Like the Plan de Jacques Gomboust, only important monuments are represented in elevation, while everything else is rendered in a flat, geometric style. St. Julien, the Chapel of St. Blaise, and another building in the same location as the one on the Plan of Gomboust, are the only structures seen on the block enclosed by the rues St. Julien le Pauvre, Galande, la Bucherie, and Fouarre. The small, rather crude images have very little detail. You can still see that St. Julien has a spire over the middle of the nave, and that the Chapel of Saint Blaise stands at right angles to the church, rather than parallel. The courtyard to the west of St. Julien and the alley going from it past the Chapel to the rue Galande are clearly shown. |
| Detail of the Plan de Louis Bretez, known as the Turgot Plan, copper plate engraving, 1739. Created by Bretez at the request of Michel Etienne Turgot, this map shows Paris as it was in 1734. It also reflects the changes made to the portal of St. Julien in 1651. The building now has a Neoclassical façade with a triangular pediment and little pilasters, and the spire shown in earlier maps is gone, replaced by a tiny cross on the east end. The portal has a rounded archway, which is inaccurate, and Turgot has chosen to omit the ruined remains of the old Gothic portal which were still attached to the northwest corner of the building. Another interesting detail shown here is the long, narrow structure bordering the Seine along the north side of the rue de la Bucherie. This is the Salle St. Charles, a large annex belonging to the Hôtel Dieu (Paris hospital) which acquired the Priory of St. Julien in 1655. Two bridges connected the annex to the main hospital building located across the Seine on the Île de la Cité. One of them, the Pont au Double, actually had a hospital ward built on top of it. A second annex would eventually be built on the other side of the rue de la Bucherie, near St. Julien. |
| Just for fun, I conclude with some details from three 20th-century tourist maps of Paris which feature small illustrations of well-known Paris monuments placed on ordinary, flat street maps. These modern maps are very reminiscent of the mixed-technique plans of Gomboust and la Caille. The one on the left is from a map that was handed out by the Red Cross to American troops in 1944 to help them find their way around Paris. In the center is a detail of a map that was included in an undated tourist guide published by Guy, of Paris postcard fame. On the right is a detail from a 1998 map distributed for free by the Printemps department store. The orientation of all three is typical of modern maps. North is at the top, so the east end of St. Julien is visible, rather than the portal. All of the maps are fairly accurate in their depiction of the church. The side aisles and the bell tower on the south side are shown, although the tower is really much shorter than it appears in the maps. The Guy map has a detailed rendering of the eastern apses, but the building's orientation is off by a good 90 degrees. (The nearby church of St. Severin was treated far worse--the building is completely turned around so that the portal is where the apse should be). Although neither rare nor valuable, these tourist maps carry on the historic tradition of the old pictorial plans of Paris. |
| Two of the map details shown here are excerpts from the click-and-zoom maps found on The Paris Pages website. The others were scanned from a variety of sources, and are used here strictly for educational and research purposes. |
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St. Julien le Pauvre url: http://www.people.ku.edu/~asnow/ Webmaster: A. Snow This site last updated 05/01/2006. |