Catholic Church of the Val-de-Grâce

The Catholic Church of the Val-de-Grâce is recognizable by its expansive dome and a two-story façade featuring paired columns that support a triangular pediment. This Baroque structure is part of a former royal abbey commissioned by Queen Anne of Austria. After twenty-three years of childless marriage, she vowed to build a magnificent church if she were ever to have a son. When her son, the future King Louis XIV, was finally born in sixteen thirty-eight, she set out to fulfill that promise.