My visit to Saint-Denis was part of my mini-marathon of morbidity. Saint-Denis, Père Lachaise, the Catacombs, and then Père Lachaise again. I went with my dear friend Katherine and my roommate Beth two Saturdays ago.
First, I should explain a bit of why the Saint-Denis basilica is important. Here's a list, à la Grace Stephenson:
(1) This is the site of the death of one of the patron saints of Paris. Yep, Saint Denis. Curiously, his place of execution and place of death are actually different. Saint Denis, the first Christian missionary sent into Gaul, was beheaded by heathens on Montmartre hill (which could etymologically mean "martyr's hill," but more likely means "Mars hill." And sorry for the minutia), but promptly proceeded to pick up his head and walk six miles to the present location of the church that bears his name, apparently preaching all the way. This feat places him among the many cephalophores of hagiography. I didn't have any idea such words existed until I took the class. Happy wiki-ing if you care to know what they mean.
(2) In the 12th century, Abbot Suger gave his church a makeover, inspired by the writings of Dionysius the Aeropagite (appropriately often mistaken for Saint Denis) that praised light as the conduit to contemplate the divine. The product was the first truly Gothic church. We often think of Gothic architecture as being vast, dreary, foreboding, and dark; however, in comparison to the Romanesque churches that preceded them, Gothic churches are quite luminous!
(3) This, best of all, is the burial place of basically all the kings of France since Clovis who lived during the 5th century. That is, it was the royal repository until the Revolution, when the bodies were removed from their tombs and disposed of. There are still some strange odds and ends--the mummified heart of the five-year-old mysterious Louis XVII who was crowned in exile, the supposed bones of his parents Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Still, the tombs and sarcophagi remain, and if you can just trick yourself into pretending that all the bodies remain, it's potentially quite a creepy place.
The Saint-Denis Basilica is a beautiful place. Want proof?
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