La Madeleine, Paris

La Madeleine, Paris _Designed by LeFabShop ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:311002 ) _L'église de la Madeleine , Madeleine Church; more formally, L'église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine; less formally, just La Madeleine) is a Roman Catholic church occupying a commanding position in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The Madeleine Church was designed in its present form as a temple to the glory of Napoleon's army. To its south lies the Place de la Concorde, to the east is the Place Vendôme, and to the west Saint-Augustin, Paris. _The site of this edifice, centred at the end of rue Royale, a line-of-sight between Gabriel's twin hôtels in the Place de la Concorde, required a suitably monumental end from the time the square was established in 1755, as Place Louis XV. The settlement round the site was called Ville l'Évêque, for it had belonged to the bishop of Paris since the time of Philip II of France, when Bishop Maurice de Sully seized the synagogue that stood on the site from the Jews of Paris in 1182, and consecrated it a church dedicated to Mary Magdalene. The site in the suburban faubourg had been annexed to the city of Paris since 1722. _The Madeleine is built in the Neo-Classical style and was inspired by the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, one of the best-preserved of all Roman temples. Its fifty-two Corinthian columns, each 20 metres high, are carried around the entire building. The pediment sculpture of the Last Judgement is by Lemaire, and the church's bronze doors bear reliefs representing the Ten Commandments. Its size is 354 feet (108 meters) long and 141 feet (43 meters) wide. _The church has a celebrated pipe organ, built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1845. It was restored by Cavaille-Coll's successor Charles Mutin in 1927, who also extended the manuals to 56 notes. Tonal modifications were carried out by Roethinger, Danion-Gonzalez, and Dargassies in 1957, 1971 and 1988 respectively. _Today the Madeleine is a parish of the Archdiocese of Paris. Masses and other religious services are celebrated daily. Funerals and weddings in Paris are still celebrated here. In the basement of the Church (entrance on the Flower Market side) is The Foyer de la Madeleine.