The basilica in the bush — the world's largest church in the birthplace of Africa's founding president
Yamoussoukro is the official capital of Côte d'Ivoire (though the commercial capital Abidjan handles most governmental functions in practice) and the birthplace of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the country's founding president who ruled from 1960 to 1993. Houphouët-Boigny spent some $300 million of state funds to build the Basilique de Notre-Dame de la Paix — a replica of St Peter's Basilica in Rome, taller than the original, in the middle of a small interior town — dedicating it to Pope John Paul II who consecrated it in 1990, despite the church's concerns about the cost in one of Africa's poorest…
Yamoussoukro was a small village called N'Gokro until Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who was born there in 1905, declared it the new capital in 1983 — part of a grand vision of building a world-class city that would attract international investment to his home region. The city was built with wide eight-lane highways (almost deserted), a presidential palace compound with a moat of sacred crocodiles, a golf course, a hotel complex, and finally the basilica — all constructed while the country's cocoa and coffee economy was declining. The basilica was Houphouët-Boigny's personal gift to the Pope and to…