The Sacre Coeur Basilica is a Roman Catholic Church located at the top of the butte of Montmartre. Its white dome is visible in the distance across Paris, as a beacon of Montmartre. With a dome 200 metres above the Seine, it provides a beautiful panoramic view of Paris and is a magnet for tourists.
The Basilica owes its existence to the French defeat in 1871 in the Franco-Prussian war. It was built largely as atonement for the suffering of the war and what some regarded as the moral decline of the country since the French Revolution.
From a competition attracting 77 different proposals, its neo-Byzantine-Romanesque design, took 40 years and five architects to build, and it was not consecrated until 1919. Montmartre, as the 'Hill of the Martyrs', was chosen for the location of the basilica, in part, because it was traditionally regarded as the place where Saint Denis, the Patron saint of Paris, was beheaded by the Romans.