![\"carte-basilique-sacre-coeur-02\"](\"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/carte-basilique-sacre-coeur-02-300x195.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIs Sacre-Coeur really ugly? I always used to think so, coming into town on the Roissy Bus from CDG. Then I found out this is a common reaction. Adolf Hitler thought it hideous, a “mosque.” (Der F\u00fchrer was of course an architect manqu\u00e9.) Google the question and complaints are all over. Go ahead.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Here is a good whingey tourist page:\u00a0http:\/\/theotherparis.net\/hotspots\/sacre.htm<\/p>\n
The second or third time I went to Sacre-Coeur was in May 2002. I was with a couple of friends from Oxfordshire, Alma and Julia. Alma was baffled by the place. She knew it was a stop on the tourist itinerary, but didn’t understand its purpose.<\/p>\n
I started\u00a0to explain the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, and the popular belief that France had degraded itself since 1789 and needed to atone for its sins and reconsecrate itself, and L\u00e9on Bloy, and Therese Martin of Lisieux, the Little Flower of Jesus… But I held my tongue, more or less.<\/p>\n
I held my tongue and listened for the nugget\u00a0of Alma’s confusion.<\/p>\n
“I mean, why do they have this?” she asked. Why do they need this, in addition to Notre Dame?”<\/p>\n
Alma was born in Manchester, but her parents were refugees from Poland (Catholic) and the Ukraine (Orthodox) and she had no significant religious\u00a0upbringing. She also has lactase deficiency. I decided\u00a0she probably couldn’t digest my\u00a0Bellocian explanations of this or\u00a0that.<\/p>\n
So I just said, very smoothly, “Oh well you see, this one is a basilica<\/em>.” And left it at that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is Sacre-Coeur really ugly? I always used to think so, coming into town on the Roissy Bus from CDG. Then I found out this is a common reaction. Adolf Hitler thought it hideous, a “mosque.” (Der F\u00fchrer was of course an architect manqu\u00e9.) Google the question and complaints are all over. Go ahead. Here is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":386,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cocoa-marsh"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/carte-basilique-sacre-coeur-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6KTdR-6d","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/margotdarby.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}