Saint-Germain-des-Prés_(abbey)

The Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (French pronunciation: [sɛ̃ ʒɛʁmɛ̃ de pʁe]) is a Roman Catholic parish church located in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris. It was originally the church of a Benedictine abbey founded in 558 by Childebert I, the son of Clovis, King of the Franks. It was destroyed by the Vikings, rebuilt, and renamed in the 8th century for Saint Germain, an early Bishop of the city. it was rebuilt with elements in the new Gothic style in the eleventh century, and was given the first flying buttresses in Paris in the 12th century. It is considered the oldest existing church in Paris.
Originally located outside the walls of medieval Paris, in the fields and meadows of the Left Bank, known as "les Pres", the church was the center of a rich and important abbey complex, famous for its illuminated manuscripts and scholarship, and was the burial place of Germanus and of Childebert and other rulers of the Merovingian Dynasty.