In Paris, everything ends up on the chopping block. Or, everything starts there. It all depends on your point of view… Hot or cold, heads are often involved. And they’re not always so easy to hold on to…

The first of the great Parisian decapitees, Saint Denis, lived south of the Seine, and his life story is a true journey from south to north. At first settled at the current location of rue Henri Barbusse, he headed towards the river and founded St Etienne des Grès, at the corner of Cujas and St Jaques streets, before founding St Benoit, at the north-east corner of the Sorbonne. Arrested with Rustique and Eleuthère by the prefect Fesceninus who demanded they renounce their faith, he was tortured at the eastern point of île de la Cité. The ordeal was effective in its refinement: the three Christians were flagellated, thrown into a dungeon, stretched on a rack, thrown to lions, locked in an oven, attached to a cross and, at last, condemned to decapitation before the Temple of Mercury. And here our feet stroll gilded with Christian thoughts as they climb a little tree-lined street leading to Montmartre that would one day be called the rue des Martyrs.

Beheaded at the junction with rue Yvonne Le Tac, Denis picked up his head and washed it in what would become the fountain of St Denis (at the Girardon cul-de-sac). Then he walked, head under his arm, down the other side of the hill. After 6000 paces, he arrived before a woman: Catulla, who received the head from the hands of the saint, before he collapsed. It’s in this spot that the Basilica of St Denis was founded… Our kings would rest there serenely, until the last of them (or almost the last…) ended up he too without his head. What goes around comes around, as we know…