Basilique Du Sacre Coeur

The ‘Basilique du Sacre Coeur’ is positions at the top of butte Montmartre. To get here one can climb the endless steps, or take a cable car. The basilica and the beauty of the landscape draw thousands of visitor’s everyday. To find an “original” souvenir, one can go to the neighbor Place du Tertre where one will find many caricature artists.

Basilica in Paris, devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a famous landmark atop the Monometer, from which it tower above the city. Built during 1875 -1914 by subscriptions as a votive offering after the Franco-Prussian War, it was consecrated in 1919 after World War I and has a patriotic as well as religious symbolic significance. Designed by the architect Paul Abadie, the basilica is a huge and harmonious edifice in the Byzantine-Romanesque style. Behind its tall dome rises a bell tower 276 ft high.

The Sacré-Coeur Catholic basilica was constructed at the end of the 19th century at the top of the Montmartre hill in Paris. Its famous white pastry like architecture is dominating the city. The Sacré-Coeur is a holy place and a flagship of Catholic devotion to the Holy Virgin in Paris. It pull towards itself many pilgrims from all over the world and has a large network of affiliated churches .The Sacré-Coeur has been represented many times by the Montmartre painters near-by on Place du Tertre.

The principal frontage, with the broad bronze doors, is framed equestrian statues of Louis Saint and Jeanne d' Arc. She opens on a square which dominates the town of Paris and makes it feasible to welcome a splendid sight on the capital.Inside, the apse is adorned with an immense mosaic of 475 m signed of Luc-Olivier Merson, representing the Trinity and the devotion of France to the Sacred Heart.Many statues also decorate the vaults. The basilica of the Sacred Heart is one of the Parisian monuments most famous and most visited.

It was decided to establish in front of the Basilica, a public garden inclined repurchasing the 50 meters of difference in level between the boulevard and the hillock and to largely open this public garden on the boulevard by cutting down the block of houses which masks the aspect of it. The study of the venture was entrusted to Jean Formigé, who with the assistance of Bévière, draws up a great project of inclined garden, leading by slopes and embranchments simply laid out, initially with a large water tower, then with the esplanade which precedes the Basilica.

The basilica of the Sacred Heart was born from the wish of the catholic church of expier the “revolutionary crimes” of the insurrectionary movement of the Commune and to wash the defeat of France at the time of the war of 1870 against Prussia.

In rise, Abadie took as a starting point the church of style romano-Byzantine of Saint-Face-of-Périgueux, which it itself restored. The Sacred Heart, entirely built out of white stone, comprises four domes encircling a vast cupola which culminates to 94 Mr. a bell-tower; high of 94 m contains a large bell melted in 1895.

But, as one walks a few meters away from the core tourist area, one discovers very quiet and charming spots, quite unexpected in such a large city as Paris.

By Anil Gupta