Sacré-Cœur
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40 free Sacré-Cœur trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sacré-Cœur is the white basilica that floats above Paris from the top of Montmartre, and almost everything about it is stranger than it looks. Its stone does something odd in the rain, the ground beneath it had to be rebuilt before a single wall went up, and for more than a century people have argued about whether it should be there at all. This quiz gathers the best fun facts about Sacré-Cœur: the national crisis that set the project in motion, the engineering hidden under the hill, the giant bell and the glittering art inside, the politicians and writers who fought it, and the films and sporting moments that keep bringing visitors to its steps. It is made for travellers planning a trip to Montmartre, students of French history and architecture, and anyone who likes a landmark with a good story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you guess wrong.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Opponents of Sacré-Cœur once proposed hiding the basilica behind a full-size copy of which famous sculpture?
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty had just been shipped from France to America when critics suggested raising a twin in front of the church to block it from view. The plan was dropped as too costly.
Q 02Sacré-Cœur is built of Château-Landon stone, which reacts in what way whenever rain falls on it?
It whitens itself
It whitens itself, because the stone gives off calcite on contact with rainwater. The travertine, quarried at Souppes-sur-Loing in Seine-et-Marne, is also extremely hard and fine-grained.
Q 03Which 2023 action film has its hero fight up Montmartre's long staircase to a sunrise duel at Sacré-Cœur?
John Wick: Chapter 4
John Wick: Chapter 4 has Keanu Reeves's hitman fight his way up the steps of the Rue Foyatier twice before a pistol duel in front of the basilica.
Q 04What has continued inside Sacré-Cœur day and night, without a single break, since the summer of 1885?
A relay of prayer
A relay of prayer has never stopped here: men, women and children take turns before the altar, hour after hour, through every night of the year.
Q 05What does Sacré-Cœur, the name of the white basilica crowning Montmartre, mean in English?
Sacred Heart
Sacred Heart is a Catholic devotion to the heart of Jesus, and Pope Pius IX had made it a feast of the Church in 1856, not long before the basilica was planned.
Q 06Which kind of railway, opened in 1900, lifts visitors up the hillside to Sacré-Cœur in about ninety seconds?
A funicular
A funicular first ran here on water power: tanks under each cabin were filled at the top, so the heavier car sank and pulled the other one up. It went electric in 1935.
Q 07Bronze horseback statues of two French saints guard the porch of Sacré-Cœur: King Louis IX and which warrior?
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc was meant to appear as a peasant girl fighting sword in hand, but the monument committee made sculptor Hippolyte Lefèbvre show her in armour.
Q 08Which 2001 French film, set among the cafés of Montmartre, stages a key scene in the gardens below Sacré-Cœur?
Amélie
Amélie follows a shy waitress, played by Audrey Tautou, who works at the Café des 2 Moulins, a real Montmartre café on the Rue Lepic.
Q 09How was the decades-long construction of Sacré-Cœur paid for, a point written into the 1873 law approving it?
Donations from the public
Donations from the public covered the cost, and a 'subscription of stones' let families pay for a single block carved with their name, initials or coat of arms.
Q 10Sacré-Cœur began as a vow of national penance made after France's crushing defeat in which war?
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War left part of France under German occupation, and the two laymen behind the vow blamed the disaster on spiritual causes rather than political ones.
Q 11The apse of Sacré-Cœur holds one of the world's largest examples of which art form, covering 475 square metres?
Mosaic
Mosaic covers the whole vault: the Christ in Glory, inaugurated in 1923, shows Christ in white with arms outstretched amid a crowd of saints, popes and worshippers.
Q 12Which archangel, honored as a protector of France, has his own Chapel of the Armies inside Sacré-Cœur?
Michael
Michael also stands beside Christ in the apse, and a 1903 statue by François Sicard shows him slaying a dragon on one of the basilica's pinnacles.
Q 13In which 2024 Olympic sport did competitors climb Montmartre, the hill crowned by Sacré-Cœur, three times?
Road cycling
Q 21Which 1871 uprising began beside the future site of Sacré-Cœur, in a clash over cannons parked on Montmartre?
The Paris Commune
The Paris Commune held the city for two months until the army crushed it in a 'Bloody Week' of street fighting, which is why the basilica has drawn political argument ever since.
Q 22Sacré-Cœur grew out of the national shock when which French ruler was captured at the Battle of Sedan?
Napoleon III
Napoleon III was taken prisoner in early September 1870, and within days the Bishop of Nantes was calling the defeat a divine punishment for a century of moral decline.
Q 23The great bell of Sacré-Cœur, normally kept for major feasts, rang out on an August night in 1944 to hail what?
Road cycling sent the Olympic peloton up the hill, and the route inspired the 2025 Tour de France to add Montmartre climbs to its final stage.
Q 14Which fairground ride is a fixture of the park that climbs the hillside directly below Sacré-Cœur?
A carousel
A carousel stands at the foot of the park's great staircase: a two-storey merry-go-round built in the style of eighteenth-century Venice.
Q 15Which square a few streets from Sacré-Cœur fills each day with artists setting up their easels for tourists?
Place du Tertre
Place du Tertre was laid out in 1635 on land given up by the nuns of Montmartre's Benedictine abbey. Picasso and Modigliani later lived close by.
Q 16Tradition says which patron saint of Paris was beheaded on Montmartre, centuries before Sacré-Cœur rose there?
Denis
Denis, the first bishop of Paris, is said in legend to have picked up his severed head and walked on for miles, preaching a sermon as he went.
Q 17What is the name of the 19-ton bell of Sacré-Cœur, cast near Annecy in the Alps and the largest in France?
La Savoyarde
La Savoyarde was a gift from the four dioceses of Savoy. It rings only on major feast days, and its note was said to carry ten kilometres.
Q 18Which animals hauled the 19-ton great bell of Sacré-Cœur up to the basilica when it reached Paris in 1895?
Horses
Horses did the job: twenty-eight of them were harnessed to a single wagon, and the bell's arrival on the hill was the talk of Paris.
Q 19Centuries of mining for which mineral left Montmartre so hollow that Sacré-Cœur needed 83 deep concrete pillars?
Gypsum
Gypsum from Montmartre was heated to make plaster, which is how 'plaster of Paris' got its name. The old tunnels left the ground too unstable to build on without deep shafts.
Q 20Which restorer of Périgueux Cathedral won the contest to design Sacré-Cœur but died long before it was finished?
Paul Abadie
Paul Abadie died in 1884, soon after the foundations were finished, and his successors stretched the round domes he had planned into taller ovals.
The liberation of Paris
The liberation of Paris was hours away: as the first French troops reached the Hôtel de Ville, a radio announcer asked priests to ring their bells, and churches across the city answered.
Q 24What destroyed the original stained-glass windows of Sacré-Cœur, which had to be replaced with new ones in 1946?
Wartime bombing
Wartime bombing in April 1944 blew out windows that had taken from 1903 to 1920 to install, so the glass in the basilica is younger than the building around it.
Q 25Which Catholic order traces its birth to vows taken in 1534 on Montmartre, the future hill of Sacré-Cœur?
The Jesuits
The Jesuits began with Ignatius of Loyola and six fellow students making their promises in a Montmartre crypt, and the basilica has a chapel dedicated to him.
Q 26Montmartre locals nicknamed Sacré-Cœur 'Notre-Dame de la Galette' after which kind of building near the site?
A windmill
A windmill, the Moulin de la Galette, stood near the spot where the Archbishop of Paris laid a first stone of pink marble in June 1875.
Q 27A much smaller copy of Sacré-Cœur stands in the hills above the capital of which Caribbean island?
Martinique
Martinique built its Sacré-Cœur de Balata in the 1920s above Fort-de-France, where many people had settled after Mount Pelée destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre in 1902.
Q 28The great organ of Sacré-Cœur, built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1898, was first made for what kind of building?
A private château
A private château in Biarritz was its first home: Baron Albert de l'Espée wanted the best organ available whatever the cost, and the basilica acquired it years later.
Q 29The main entrance of Sacré-Cœur breaks with church tradition by facing which direction, toward the centre of Paris?
South
South is where the city lies, and the narrow hilltop also left more room along a north–south line, so the builders broke with the usual east–west layout.
Q 30Which pope made a pilgrimage to Sacré-Cœur during his first official visit to France?
John Paul II
John Paul II came on 1 June 1980, and one of the chapels behind the high altar was later dedicated to him as a saint.