Sacré-Cœur

 Sacré-Cœur  is a Roman Catholic church located at the summit of the butteMontmartre, the highest point in the city. It was constructed in 1875 and was completed in 1914. 

A law of public utility was passed to seize land at the summit of Mont Martre for the construction of the basilica. Architect Paul Abadie designed the basilica after winning a competition over 77 other architects. 

Construction costs, estimated at 7 million French francs and drawn entirely from private donations. Donations were encouraged by the expedient of permitting donors to "purchase" individual columns or other features as small as a brick. It was declared by the National Assembly that the state had the ultimate responsibility for funding. Abadie died not long after the foundation had been laid, in 1884, and five architects continued with the work. The basilica was not completed until 1914, when war intervened; it was formally dedicated in 1919 after  World War I.

 In February 1971 demonstrators pursued by the police took refuge in the basilica and called upon their radical comrades to join them in occupying the church "built upon the bodies of communards in order to efface that red flag that had for too long floated over Paris" as their leaflets expressed it.

Though today the basilica is asserted to be dedicated in honor of the 58,000 who lost their lives during the war, the decree of the Assemblée nationale 24 July 1873, responding to a request by the archbishop of Paris and voting its construction, specifies that it is to "expiate the crimes of the Commune. Montmartre had been the site of the Commune's first insurrection, and the Communards had executed Georges Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, who became a martyr for the resurgent Catholic Church. His successor Guibert, climbing the Butte Montmartre in October 1872, was reported to have had a vision as clouds dispersed over the panorama: "It is here, it is here where the martyrs are, it is here that the Sacred Heart must reign so that it can beckon all to come."