Saint-Jacques Tower
In Saint-Jacques Tower, built as the Flamboyant Gothic church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, you have one of Paris’s clearest links to the medieval pilgrimage economy. The tower—about 52 metres high—was raised between 1509 and 1523 under King Francis I, with masons Jean de Felin, Julien Ménart, and Jean de Revier credited for the work. Dedicated to Saint James the Greater and tied to a relic of the saint, the church helped funnel pilgrims toward Santiago de Compostela along the Way of St James. That role ended abruptly when the Revolution changed the city’s priorities. The church was demolished in 1793, and the tower survived only because preserving it was a condition of the contract that valued the church for its building materials. In 1824 the tower was used as a shot tower for making small shot, before the City of Paris repurchased it in 1836 and declared it a monument historique in 1862. …
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