Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre

Image: Wikimedia Commons

After the disasters of 1870 and 1871, war, siege, and civil bloodshed, Catholic France made a National Vow: to build a church to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in penance and hope, and the National Assembly itself declared the work of public utility in 1873. Paul Abadie's Romano-Byzantine design rose from 1875 on the hill of Montmartre, the mount of martyrs where Saint Denis is said to have died, built in Château-Landon travertine, a stone that whitens with rain, so the domes gleam brighter as they age. Finished in 1914 and consecrated in 1919, the basilica holds one of the world's largest mosaics, Christ in Glory with arms outstretched above the choir, and the nineteen-ton Savoyarde, one of the heaviest bells in France. Yet its true wonder is invisible from the famous steps: inside, the Blessed Sacrament has been adored without interruption, day and night, through two world wars, since 1885, a chain of prayer above Paris that has never once broken.