Around the Jardin de Reuilly
France > Paris > East > 12e > Around the Jardin de Reuilly
North of the Jardin de Reuilly, on place M. de Fontenay (M° Montgâllet), lies the peculiar church of St-Éloi, built in 1968 to a ground-plan of a right-angled triangle with the altar positioned at one of the non-right-angled corners. It all feels more like an industrial building than a place of worship: both outside and inside are clad with lacquered aluminium leaves, in honour of St Éloi, patron saint of jewellers and iron-workers who lived in this area in the seventeenth century. Close by the church, on the other side of rue de Reuilly, is one of the most perfect villas in Paris, the impasse Mousset. Roses, clematis, wisteria and honeysuckle wind across telegraph lines and up the whitewashed walls of its tiny houses; a rusted hotel sign advertising wines and liqueurs, as well as beds, still hangs from one of the houses; and you can hear children playing in hidden gardens. There are no designer offices here, just homes, the odd artist's studio and a small printworks.Another unusual church lies southeast of the Jardin de Reuilly – about a twenty-minute walk down avenue Daumesnil, on the other side of place Félix Eboué, on the right. An extremely narrow brickwork facade, topped by the tallest bell tower in Paris, conceals the vast cupola – filling the whole block behind the street – of the Église du Saint-Esprit, built in 1931 in memory of the colonial missionaries. The Roman Catholic Church was worried by the possible reaction of the anticlerical, communist sympathies of the local residents, hence the disguise of its enormous dimensions.
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