American Cathedral in Paris

The American Cathedral in Paris is a late-nineteenth-century Anglican church standing between the Champs-Elysees and the Pont de l'Alma. Built between 1881 and 1886 to designs by the English architect George Edmund Street in a Gothic Revival idiom modelled on English parish churches, it serves as the seat of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe, a transatlantic jurisdiction of the American Episcopal Church. The slender stone-spired tower on Avenue George V signals an unusual Protestant presence in heavily Catholic Paris and recalls the growing Anglo-American expatriate community of the Belle Epoque. Visitors find notable stained glass by the English workshop of Clayton and Bell, a quiet timber-pewed interior and memorial tablets to American soldiers of both world wars. English-language services, organ recitals and midday concerts make the cathedral a low-key cultural anchor west of the city's main tourist axes.