BASILICA OF OUR LADY OF PEACE

At the bend in the vast avenues of Yamoussoukro, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, the largest building in the world of Christianity, stands like a silent sentinel in the middle of a landscape of ochre earth and green savannah. This incredible building has a singular history. In the early 1960s, Félix Houphouët-Boigny decided to turn his native village into a queen city, a new city that was promoted to political and administrative capital in 1983. Gradually, the small town was equipped with buildings that rivaled each other in technical and architectural audacity. The monumentality that characterizes most of the achievements and public facilities of the time is inherent to the identity of the city: it is to symbolize the advent of a new power and to adorn with attributes to its height the first capital belonging to a national choice and not the exclusive will of the colonizer, unlike Grand-Bassam, Bingerville and Abidjan. The culmination of this monumentality is reached with Notre-Dame de la Paix, considered as the African replica of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome - which it exceeds by 21 meters in height at the level of its solid gold summit cross, its dome, in accordance with the Pope's will, remaining slightly lower than that of St. Peter's -, a titanic translation of the president's faith (and a symbolic frontier between the Muslim north and the Christian south, as has also often been whispered) in the form of a "link between earth and heaven.

Although its imposing splendor strikes the visitor under all lights and all angles (the photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand was not insensitive to it, who devoted an exclusive monograph to the building: The Basilica, Éditions Mardaga, Liège, 1990), we also recommend observing its surroundings at night, where it gives the full measure of its majestic enchantment. 2,428 projectors have been installed to light up the entire building, which is entirely illuminated at two times of the year: the evening of the Easter Vigil and the evening of the Birth of Christ.

Visit. The guided tour of the basilica (about 45 minutes), although a bit hagiographic, is instructive and very well informed, with zealous guides who take their mission very seriously. You start on the square, then take the elevator to find yourself on the dizzying floors near the dome. We recommend the high mass on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. broadcast from the synoptic and often concelebrated by several priests, both European and African: Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei in Latin. It is a little long (two hours...), but worth it for the songs, the colors and the atmosphere.

The works. Built according to the plans of the architects Patrick d'Hauthuille and Pierre Fakhoury, this monumental building of nearly 100,000 tons rests on 156 bentonite drilled piles of 1.10 m in diameter, driven into the ground 30 m deep. Just imagine! Its cost, estimated at 40 billion CFA francs (more than 60 million euros), caused a lot of talk at the time, but Houphouët, who had already been strongly criticized for the construction of St. Paul's Cathedral in the Plateau (6 billion CFA francs, or about 9 million euros), assured that he was financing the work out of his "personal coffers. The site chosen for its construction is a coconut grove of about 100 hectares belonging to the Houphouët-Boigny family. Of the 130 hectares of his family estate, the donor (we tend to forget this, but the basilica is above all an offering from Félix Houphouët-Boigny to the Vatican) has set aside no less than 72 hectares for the construction of the basilica. The blessing of the foundation stone took place during the second visit of Pope John Paul II to Côte d'Ivoire, on August 10, 1985 (the first was in 1980; on this occasion, the pontiff blessed the first stone of the future St. Paul's Cathedral and the future Marian Shrine of Adjamé). The pharaonic work began in July of the following year and was completed in September 1989, taking a total of barely three years ("It is [re]time for [pyramiii-deees]"! During this period, 4,500 workers, including 1,500 Africans, worked in shifts 24 hours a day, employed by several dozen internationally renowned companies, under the direction of Pierre Fakhoury, an Ivorian architect of Lebanese origin born in Dabou, who was then director of major works in Côte d'Ivoire, and Patrick d'Hauthuille, the artistic director. His Holiness the Pope officially consecrated the basilica one year after the end of the work, on September 10, 1990. Since then, the religious building has had the status of "minor basilica", which designates churches that stand out for their singular architecture (the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, for example). In the 18th century, the term took on a canonical meaning independent of any architectural considerations, in order to distinguish these buildings from the four major basilicas found only in Rome: St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major and St. Paul.

The garden and the esplanade. The main entrance to the basilica is from the south and leads to 37 hectares of a huge French garden, designed by Jean-Pierre Bonafos, a French landscape architect living in the Ivory Coast. Its maintenance requires a minimum of 43 gardeners. Its symmetrical flowerbed, planted with more than 400,000 different species of shrubs, flowers and plants, is delimited by paths, the main one of which, one kilometer long, leads to the esplanade of the basilica. There, 14,300 square meters of granite and marble extend to the limits of the covered peristyle, composed of two symmetrical rows of double Doric columns enclosing the elliptical esplanade that evokes two open arms and symbolizes the warm welcome of the Church. In the center of the esplanade, on the ground, a dove with wings spread over a span of 20 meters represents the Holy Spirit who guides, protects and gathers the peoples of the earth. Four chapels dedicated to the four evangelists (Matthew, John, Luke and Mark) limit the arms of the peristyle.

The square. The esplanade leads to a Latin cross shaped square delimited by a set of 84 Doric columns. On the ground, thousands of square meters of marble (the basilica has a total of 700,000 square meters of marble) imported directly from Italy, Spain and Portugal, on which geometric patterns are displayed, with ochre-colored rosettes continuing their exuberant flowering into the interior of the basilica. The square is covered by a huge staff roof that protects the high windows of the dome and can accommodate about 30,000 people. This roof also forms a terrace that can be accessed by elevators located inside the building and offers a breathtaking view of the gardens and savannah of the Baoulé country around.

The dome. With a height of 60 m and a diameter of 90 m at the base, the imposing dome dominating the terrace of the basilica is among the highest in the world. The work of the French company Eiffel Construction Métallique (now Eiffage Métal), it is separated from the terrace by a double ambulatory, exterior and interior (the latter is called the ambulatory of the Apostles). The upper cap of the dome, located at 120 m from the ground, has a double zenithal glass roof. One on the outside, made of watertight glass, and the other on the inside, on whose stained glass windows the dove of the Holy Spirit - the architectural leitmotif of the basilica - spreads its wings in a circle 40 m in diameter. At the foot of this cap rests a lantern 38 m high and weighing 320 tons, all topped by a golden summit cross that brings the total height of the Basilica to 158 m, compared to 137 m for St. Peter's in Rome.

The interior of the basilica. It corresponds to what is called the sanctuary, delimited in its circumference by arcades composed of 60 giant columns of more than 30 m in height and divided into 48 full Doric columns and 12 hollow Ionic columns. The solid columns support the weight of the central part, estimated at 98,000 tons, while the hollow columns symbolize the 12 apostles of Jesus and house the four elevators that allow access to the ambulatory of the Apostles and the outdoor terrace. The interior of the basilica has a capacity of 18,000 people (7,000 seated and 11,000 standing) and its walls are made up of 24 large glass windows set between 24 pillars. In the middle of this glass wall are 22 doors and hollows: two chapels dedicated respectively to Our Lady of Peace and St. Joseph. The sanctuary itself is dedicated to the grace of the Virgin Mary.

The statues. Inside the dome, several statues, of European and African inspiration, express the mission of the Holy Mother in the life of Christians. The most famous of these is the one in the Marian Chapel: the "Queen of Peace". It is a reproduction of the sculpture in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, the first church in the West to be dedicated to the Mother of Jesus. The only difference with the original is that the Mary of Yamoussoukro salutes humanity with her right hand, at the request of President Houphouët-Boigny and in order to respect the African tradition of never saluting with the left hand. In the symmetrical chapel, the sculpture of St. Joseph shows the adoptive father of Jesus initiating his son to the work of a carpenter. Carved from a block of marble weighing 800 kilos, it is a unique model and the only example of a representation of Joseph. Another statue among the curiosities of the basilica: Our Lady of All the World, which we owe to a certain Soro, a Muslim who, for a reason unknown to the general public, was incarcerated at the penal camp of Bouaké. Taking advantage of his stay in prison to create this statue, he donated it to the basilica, which earned him a pardon from the president himself. His work has an astonishing characteristic: from close up, this Madonna seems to exude a sense of sadness, but from a distance, she is smiling happily. This Madonna with two faces thus represents the affection, the maternal empathy that requires a good mother to share the joys and sorrows of her children, like the Holy Mother of God.

High altar and baldachin. At the heart of the sanctuary, on a circular platform, is the main altar in marble, topped by a baldachin 28 m high, an alloy of bronze and brass. The central place of the altar recalls the fundamental role of the Eucharist in the life of the Church. The baldachin, although inspired by the Byzantine and Roman tradition, is nonetheless provided with African elements, since the golden spirals that surround its 4 columns represent the lianas of the tropical forest entwining the trunks of trees. At the top of the capital, resting on the 4 columns, a cross set with lapis lazuli represents Christ.

The stained glass windows. It is the stained glass window of the Holy Virgin welcoming with open arms all those who enter the basilica that rises above the entrance, thus recalling the primordial role of Mary in Christianity. She is depicted wearing a crown of 12 stars symbolizing the 12 tribes of Israel and handing over to her son Christ in glory who faces her in the stained glass window at the back of the basilica, behind the altar. With a total surface area of 7,367 square meters of painted glass, the walls of the Basilica contain the largest surface area of stained glass windows in the world. These are divided into 36 bays whose height varies between 13 and 28 m, each protected by glass panels and grids. Arrived in Yamoussoukro in panels and mounted directly on site, these stained glass windows have been numbered and all the data of their composition are computerized. They include more than 5,000 different shades of color. A joint work of a team of 70 people of 14 nationalities who worked under the direction of the great glass masters Didier Alliou and Eric Bonte, from the company France Vitrail International, they were made according to the traditional technique: use of antique glass blown and fired in the oven then painted with grisaille and manually set with lead. The stained glass windows of Notre-Dame de la Paix have nothing to envy to those which make the glory of the most prestigious religious buildings. In the brilliant light of the tropical sun, they sparkle with colors of an extraordinary purity and depth that give pride of place to the luxuriance of the African vegetation and blossom in a marvelous play of reflections on the marble and granite of the floor and columns. Four large triptychs, symbolically united under the sign of the Holy Spirit of the dome, form an invisible cross declining the great theological, philosophical and moral themes of the Christian faith at the four cardinal points. These are the triptychs of divine revelation: the Marian triptych, the Christic triptych, the triptych of creation and the triptych of the new alliance. Each triptych is dominated by a main stained glass window, surmounted by a rose window presenting one of the cardinal virtues encouraged by Christian morality: Justice, Strength, Temperance and Prudence, represented by an angelic figure painted in the middle of each rose window. The colors and motifs of each triptych draw on Greek philosophy to evoke the four elements of creation: air, fire, earth and water. The other stained glass windows in the lower part of the dome visually communicate the teachings of the Bible, and in the landscapes of Genesis, elements of African flora and fauna are interwoven. They represent respectively Our Lady of Peace, the Wedding of Cana (Jesus performs his first miracle), the birth of Jesus, St. Luke "the bull", episodes from the life of St. Paul, Moses and the Law, the baptism of Jesus, the miraculous catch of fish, the parables of Jesus, St. Mark "the lion", the Chapel of Mary, the Last Supper, the glorious Christ, the resurrection of Jesus, the chapel of St. Joseph, St. Matthew "the winged man", the healings of Jesus, the Creation, the original sin, the grapes of Canaan, the preaching of Jesus, St. John "the eagle", the day of branches and the feast of Pentecost. Finally, at the level of the interior ambulatory, the stained glass windows of the sanctuary are extended by those of the 12 apostles, each represented with their symbolic attributes and embraced by the dove of the Holy Spirit which spreads its protective wings in a sovereign halo of rays of light on the large internal glass of the dome.

The signature of the master builder. This is usually the end of the visit to the basilica: the Palm Sunday window, representing Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which Pierre Fakhoury chose for his signature, in keeping with the medieval tradition according to which the great masters were immortalized in their work. Christ appears crowned king in heaven, his three fingers raised to form the Holy Trinity, while the apostles spread their clothes on the ground as he passes or form a hedge of branches. In the procession of the faithful who escort him, one can easily recognize Félix Houphouët-Boigny represented as an apostle, kneeling at the feet of the risen Savior. The architect is shown on the far left of the stained glass window. He is in second position from the bottom, with the other main craftsmen of the building site, also immortalized for the occasion. The names of all the members of the team are inscribed in the palm leaves represented in the stained glass window.