Long climb to the top ends as Sacre-coeur wins listed status at last
‘Even though the basilica is in a very good state, we need to think of the future. With this, it will be protected’
IT HAS taken a century but finally Paris’s famed Sacré-coeur, the French capital’s most visited monument since Notre Dame was closed for repairs, is to become a listed building.
Some 10 million people a year climb to the top of the white basilica built between 1875 and 1914 atop Montmartre for the soaring views over Paris.
Yet while Notre Dame was listed in 1862 and the Louvre museum in 1889, the Sacré-coeur has to date not joined France’s 44,000 other listed buildings.
“Sacré-coeur is one of the symbols of Paris… But as astonishing as it seems, it is not protected as a historic monument,” said Laurent Roturier, head of cultural affairs for the Paris region.
According to Roselyne Bachelot, the culture minister, there were two reasons for this curious omission.
The first was a “wrong reading of history”; in many French minds, including those of some historians, the basilica has been linked to the Paris Commune – a radical socialist, anti-religious, and revolutionary government that seized power for two months in 1871 before being put down by the regular French army in a bloody battle. Montmartre was the epicentre of the uprising.
Far from a tribute to the communards, the basilica was “designed as an act of penitence of France after a period of unrest”, said Ms Bachelot.
The other reason, she said, was that for a long time it was seen as an eyesore, reflecting widespread “disdain for 19thcentury buildings”. The decision to finally list the edifice was a belated sign of “reparation of an error”, said Father Stéphane Esclef, rector of the basilica.
The process to list the building, which started on Tuesday, will allow it to get state subsidies from the culture ministry for renovation.
Even though the basilica is in “a very good state”, Mr Roturier said: “We need to think of the future. With this classification, the Sacré- Coeur will be protected.”