The Most Beautiful Sacred Places Seen on Screen in France
7 places · updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful sacred places seen on screen in France are Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg, Père Lachaise Cemetery and Notre-Dame de Paris. The list covers 7 sacred places seen on screen. Last updated 6 October 2026.
France invented Gothic architecture and was among the first countries to put its monuments on film, so its churches and cemeteries have been photographed, painted and filmed for as long as cameras have existed. Paris above all offers directors sacred places that are also landmarks of the city's skyline and its literature, while the provinces hold Romanesque and Gothic interiors whose stone and light need no set dressing. On screen they stand for faith, romance or Paris itself; in person they are a history of French building from the twelfth century to the nineteenth.
The Basilica of Saint-Denis is where Abbot Suger rebuilt the choir in the 1140s with wide windows and pointed arches, a work often called the birth of Gothic; it also became the burial church of the kings of France. Notre-Dame de Chartres keeps most of its medieval stained glass, famous for its deep blue, and a labyrinth inlaid in the nave floor. Notre-Dame de Paris, the setting of Victor Hugo's novel, has been reimagined in film many times, and the Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg, with its single openwork spire, was the tallest building in the world for over two centuries.
The Abbey of Fontenay in Burgundy, founded in the twelfth century, is one of the most complete Cistercian monasteries in Europe, plain and luminous. In Paris, Père Lachaise Cemetery, resting place of Chopin, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, appears in the anthology film Paris, je t'aime, and the white domes of Sacré-Cœur above Montmartre are a backdrop in Amélie.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg | Cathedral | |
| 2 | Père Lachaise Cemetery | Cemetery | |
| 3 | Notre-Dame de Paris | Cathedral | |
| 4 | Abbey of Fontenay | Monastery | ✓ |
| 5 | Basilica of Saint-Denis | Cathedral | |
| 6 | Notre-Dame de Chartres | Cathedral | ✓ |
| 7 | Sacré-Cœur | Church building |
01 Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg
France · 0.2 km from Strasbourg48.582° N 7.751° E
Image by jackmac34 from Pixabay Strasbourg's cathedral is a building of one tower, and that asymmetry is its signature. The west front was begun in 1277, with Erwin von Steinbach credited as master builder until his death in 1318, and it was planned with two spires. Only the north one was ever built: an octagonal tower and openwork spire by Ulrich Ensingen and Johannes Hültz, finished in 1439.
Did you know? In 1794 radical revolutionaries planned to pull down the spire as an insult to equality; citizens saved it by crowning it with a giant tin Phrygian cap.
02 Père Lachaise Cemetery
France · 3 km from Paris48.861° N 2.394° E
Image by 139904 from Pixabay Père Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris, 44 hectares of tree-lined paths and closely packed tombs on a hillside in the 20th arrondissement, and more than a million people have been buried here.
Did you know? Since 2014 a glass screen has guarded the lower part of Wilde's tomb from lipstick; Ireland's Office of Public Works paid for it as an Irish monument abroad.
03 Notre-Dame de Paris
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris
France · 0.6 km from Paris48.853° N 2.350° E
Image by edmondlafoto from Pixabay Bishop Maurice de Sully tore down the older cathedral on the Île de la Cité around 1160 and started again at a far larger scale. The first stone was laid in the spring of 1163, in the presence of King Louis VII and Pope Alexander III, and the high altar was consecrated in 1182.
Did you know? Napoleon crowned himself Emperor inside the cathedral on 2 December 1804.
04 Abbey of Fontenay
Abbaye de Fontenay
France47.640° N 4.389° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by guy_dugas from Pixabay Fontenay is the Cistercian ideal almost untouched: a monastery founded by Bernard of Clairvaux in 1118 in a wooded Burgundy valley near Montbard, and still standing with nearly all of its 12th-century buildings. Bernard wanted an order stricter than Cîteaux itself, and the architecture shows it.
Did you know? The abbey has served as a film location for Angélique, Marquise des Anges in 1964 and Cyrano de Bergerac in 1990.
05 Basilica of Saint-Denis
Basilique Saint-Denis
France · 8.6 km from Paris48.936° N 2.360° E
Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0 On the northern edge of Paris, in the town of Saint-Denis, stands the church where Gothic architecture was invented. Abbot Suger, adviser to Louis VI and Louis VII, rebuilt the old abbey church from about 1135, first with a new west front and then with a choir completed in 1144 that combined pointed arches, rib vaults and walls opened up for large windows into a new, light-filled whole.
Did you know? In 2004 the mummified heart of the boy who would have been Louis XVII, confirmed by DNA testing, was sealed in a crystal vase in the crypt.
06 Notre-Dame de Chartres
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres
France48.448° N 1.488° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
BT · Public domain Chartres Cathedral stands in the old capital of the Beauce, about 80 km southwest of Paris, and it is one of the most complete and influential Gothic cathedrals in Europe. At least five churches stood on this site before it. On the night of 10 June 1194 fire destroyed most of the Romanesque cathedral, sparing only the crypt, the west towers and the west front.
Did you know? The stone screen around the choir holds about 200 statues arranged in 41 scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin.
07 Sacré-Cœur
Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre
France · 3.3 km from Paris48.887° N 2.343° E
Matthias_Süßen · CC BY-SA 4.0 Seen from almost anywhere in Paris, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart is the white shape on the skyline at the top of Montmartre, the city's highest hill.
Did you know? The Savoyarde bell, a gift from the four dioceses of Savoy, was hauled up to Montmartre in October 1895 by a team of 28 horses.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful sacred places seen on screen in France?
- On our list, Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg ranks first, followed by Père Lachaise Cemetery and Notre-Dame de Paris.
- Was Amélie filmed at Sacré-Cœur?
- Yes. Several scenes of Amélie (2001) were shot in Montmartre, including the treasure hunt on the steps and gardens below the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur.
- Why is Saint-Denis called the birthplace of Gothic architecture?
- In the 1140s Abbot Suger rebuilt its choir with pointed arches, rib vaults and large stained-glass windows combined into a single luminous space. This design is considered the first truly Gothic building and was copied across France.
- Who is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery?
- Among its best-known graves are those of Frédéric Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf, Molière and Jim Morrison. Opened in 1804, it is the largest cemetery in Paris.
- How many sacred places seen on screen are on this list in France?
- The list covers 7 sacred places seen on screen.