Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal

This guide to Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal opens with the Anglican, New York-based architect the Sulpician priests hired in 1824 to design their grandest Catholic church, and an unusual request he made years later as he lay dying. It then follows Victor Bourgeau, the Montreal architect called in decades afterward to fill the bare stone shell, and the craftsmen who raised the wooden forest of carved pillars and star-scattered vault around you without a single nail. Look for the young carver barely out of his twenties among them.