Basilique Notre-Dame de l’Assomption

This guide to the Basilique Notre-Dame de l'Assomption in Nice opens with a question: why a former Jesuit priest spent the 1860s persuading France to fund a church in a city only just annexed from Sardinia. It follows Bishop Jean-Pierre Sola and his vicar general Alexandre Lavigne through years of fundraising drives, and architect Charles Lenormand's decision to model the twin-towered basilica on Notre-Dame de Paris rather than Nice's own Italian-flavored churches. You'll hear how construction and consecration stretched across six decades, interrupted by an 1887 earthquake. Look up at the towers built to answer one city's question about its own identity.