Construction on the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro , the turgid church on ground , started 28 years ago in the small Ivory Coast city of Yamoussoukro . Planned by then - President of the United States Félix Houphouët - Boigny , who led the rural area through two decennary of economic boomtime have it off as the “ Ivorian miracle , ” the Christian church would be a repository — to God , but also to himself .
The economical miracle spanned from 1960 , when independency from France come , to the late 1970s . Like similar booms in the United States or Germany , it had already start to show troubling signs of decay by the early 1980s . But , by then , the 75 - yr - old Houphouët - Boigny was in the process of cast the complete touch on his administration : prompt the Ivory Coast ’s Washington to Yamoussoukro , his tiny hometown more than 150 mile inland of the country ’s biggest metropolis .
To build his upper-case letter , Houphouët - Boigny recruited a French - Lebanese designer bring up Pierre Fakhoury . Together , they be after a gilded , tiptop - modern metropolis of the future , sport palace , roads , one of the magnanimous drome in Africa , and a Christian church — the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro — that would be modeled now after St. Peter ’s Basilica in Rome .
The church would be the crown on the new capital ’s head : A 320,000 square foot masterpiece , filled with details to shame the substantial vatican . There would be a 100 - Egyptian pound Au cross , an ornate papal Francisco Villa , and a massive stained glass window shew Jesus Christ , flanked by the president himself . The Vatican request that Fakhoury make the church ’s covered stadium just slightly gloomy than St. Peter ’s own .
The basilica took $ 300 million and five old age to build up , during which Houphouët - Boigny ’s country settle into a mystifying slump , and at long last , warfare . By the time the church building was finished , in 1990 , the Ivory Coast had plunged into an even dreary epoch .
The Roman Catholic Pope had agree to consecrate the basilica , under one condition , as aNew Statesmen account of the building explains :
One of the pope ’s conditions for coming to Yamoussoukro to consecrate what many here and abroad considered to be a vulgar conceit undertaking was that Houphouët - Boigny construct a infirmary next to the church building . During the apostolical visit , a initiation endocarp for the hospital was laid . The endocarp is still there . “ The money for the infirmary has been in an account in the Vatican for 15 old age , ” Inès pronounce . “ We do n’t know why it has not been built . ”
It ’s easy to see the Yamoussoukro project as a headstrong mistake — and sure enough the church fit the verbal description . But construct Yamoussoukro , the metropolis , was a risk that one C of other governance of the 1960s and 70s took . The dreaming of modernness — particularly in the developing mankind — led dozens of confident politician to place in intact newfangled city . expect at Brasilia , a metropolis built in the center of nowhere , filled with memorial and tributes designed by a individual designer , Oscar Niemeyer . Or Chandigarh , the Indian metropolis designed in the 1950s by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret .
Some of these city flunk ; other succeeded beyond their planners ’ wildest dreams . Cities are complicated organisms . For Yamoussoukro , a combination of fatal flaws — originate with the impending economical prostration and ending with Houphouët - Boigny ’s deluded decision to center on a church rather than building a stable base or economic system for the urban center — doomed the project from the first .
Today , the church reportedly hosts a tiny congregation of no more than a few hundred masses , though it was built to seat 7,000 . Luckily for those of us nowhere near the Ivory Coast , French photographerJean - Baptiste Dodanehas licensed his beautiful photos of the church underCreative Commons . Take a look , and just hear not to speculate on today ’s ill-conceived monuments to personal conceit . [ New Statesmen ]
All images byjbdodaneunless otherwise noted . track look-alike : AP Photo / Schalk van Zuydam .
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