First days: In the footsteps of martyrs

Montmartre, "the mountain of the martyr" is named after St. Denis - the first bishop of Paris, according to legend. Much of the details of his life are available only from an account written centuries after his death, and at this time much of the story had been transformed into the fantastic.

According to the tale, Denis was sent from Rome to minister to the Gauls in the third century, after the recent persecutions of the Emperor Decius had decimated the small Christian community of Lutetia (as well as any other Christian communities he could get his hands on) on the site of the present day Isle de la Cite (where Notre Dame is today). Here, with his trusty companions Rusticus and Eleutherius, Denis built a church. So successful was he in his ministry that he apparently royally pissed off the druids whose holy hotspot rested on the hill overlooking the island. It was they who decided that he needed to go, and fetching the three missionaries, they beheaded them on the hill. The best part comes next. Denis, loathe to end his calling so soon, picked up his head and walked two miles north before expiring - preaching a sermon the whole way. It should also be mentioned that Denis is appropriately enough the patron saint of headaches.

As I am currently lodged right below the Mountain of the Martyr, I decided to begin my first full days following the footsteps of Denis. Keeping the sun to my right I marched north (and downhill) from the Butte Montmartre and then towards Saint Denis, the eponymous suburb. As befits a headless pilgrim, I repeatedly got lost and turned around before finally reaching the final resting place of the saint, the Basilica Saint-Denis. The church was founded in the 7th century by King Dagobert I, and, with the relics of Denis in house, became increasingly a center of pilgrimage. Abbot Suger oversaw the reconstruction of the church centuries later into maybe the first Gothic cathedral. Nearly every French king (as well as several queens and various abbots) from the 10th to 18th centuries is interred here.

The highlights of the basilica are in the crypt, where one can find the tombs of Louis XIV (the Sun King, patron of Versailles) and the boy who would have been Louis XVII if the revolution hadn't stolen his chance (his calcified heart rests below his stone visage). The tomb of Henry IV is also here, the man who gave up his protestant faith on accession in an attempt to end the French wars of religion ("Paris is worth a mass"). In the center of the apse one can also see the reliquaries of Saint-Denis and his companions, the first treasure of Saint Denis which inspired so much tourism and state investment.