The Saint-Symphorien church is on a place at the end of the boulevard of Lesseps, and with the intersection of the streets Saint-Charles, of Montreuil and Artois. The square of the building gives on a place of the same name as the church, the Saint-Symphorien place.
History
The first church of the parish Saint Symphorien is built shortly after 560 with the angle of the current streets Saint Symphorien and the school of the stations, as one can distinguish it on a level gone back to 1724.
A second church would have succeeded to him.
In 1472, the Célestins monks of Paris, owners of the grounds, make rebuild a third sanctuary. One preserves of it the drawing watercolour of Delapointe (1690), which shows us a sight of the bedside of the building. The reduced proportions are rather those of a vault with a bedside in hemicycle, flanked of an arm of transept in the south. That of north is surmounted by a high bell-tower on four floors, is confined buttresses with projections and is summoned of a roof with two slopes whose last level is bored bays geminated on the two visible faces, in the south and the east. This small church is surrounded by a cemetery, a presbytery and closed gardens of an enclosing wall.
In 1722, the priest Augustin-Malo Thirié, known as Lebrun, expresses the hope of “the enlarging of a church whose too narrow terminals obstruct the devotion of faithful which attend it and which are not in state to increase it”.
When Louis XV becomes lord of Montreuil, Porchetaine and dependences, the complaints of the priest are finally heard. A project of enlarging of the old church is preserved at the public library, is signed by Dreux, architect of the King, and dated September 15th, 1754. But it is finally a new church which is built.
The new church, that we know today, is built on a vast ground of 4 hectares, limited by the streets of Artois, Saint Charles, of the refuge and Saint Jules, which Louis XV made buy for 19.500 books in June 1764. Louis-François Trouard, selected as architect, does not respect the active model of the basilicas paléo-Christian women until covering the nave of a ceiling. He prefers a barrel vault, refouillé of boxes to the Roman and opening of high windows, plumb with bays of the sides. From one end to another of the nave, the hemicycle of the atrium answers that of the chorus, as the painting of Demachy shows it. Two files of ten grooved doric columns carry an entablature separating the nave from the collateral ones, where rectangular windows inform a span on two. In the chorus, the rosettes of the curves and the low-reliefs of Lecomte, which surmounted the doors of the sacristies, made place with paintings préraphaélites of Paul Balze (of 1859 to 1861), representing the crowning of the Virgin and, partly low, the apostles within frameworks of architecture. The bell-tower, coupled with the apse, is thickened compared to the drafts of Trouard for safety reasons. As for the gate, one observes a great similarity with that built at the same time by the architect Pierre Rousseau for the vault of catechisms of the parish of German Saint in Bush hammer.
The building work lasts until the beginning of 1771 and the expenditure rises in all with 500.000 books.
The new church of Montreuil becomes the third parish of Versailles, at the time of the annexation decided by an edict of the king Louis XVI, effective at dated January 1st, 1787.
The church is registered under the historic buildings by decree of December 8th, 1953.