When Houphouët-Boigny designated his birthplace of Yamoussoukro as Côte d'Ivoire's new capital in 1983, he envisioned a city that would rival any in the world. The basilica was the centerpiece. Designed by Lebanese architect Pierre Fakhoury after St. Peter's in Rome, it was deliberately built to surpass its inspiration. The dome sits slightly lower than St. Peter's, but a taller cross pushes the total height to 158 meters -- just enough to claim the record. The cornerstone was laid on August 10, 1985, and by 1989 the French construction firm Dumez had completed what the international press quickly dubbed the "basilica in the bush." The surrounding landscape of cassava fields and palm groves made the scale feel almost hallucinatory.

The numbers alone stagger. An area of 30,000 square meters. Some 8,400 square meters of handmade stained glass from France Vitrail International near Paris, assembled in 18,500 individual panels -- the largest single stained glass commission ever placed. Iroko wood pews seat 7,000, with standing room for 11,000 more. Two identical villas flank the basilica: one houses the clergy, the other contains a room reserved for papal visits, though only one pope has ever come. The columns lining the interior serve dual purposes -- the smaller ones are structural, while the larger decorative columns conceal elevators, rainwater conduits, and building systems within their marble-clad forms. Cost estimates range from $300 million to $600 million, spent during a period when Côte d'Ivoire was mired in economic crisis.

Pope John Paul II agreed to consecrate the basilica on September 10, 1990, formally accepting it as a gift to the Catholic Church on behalf of Houphouët-Boigny. But he attached a condition: a hospital must be built nearby. Construction began, then stalled when the First Ivorian Civil War tore through the country. The hospital finally opened in January 2015, a quarter-century after the consecration, at a cost of 21.3 million euros. The irony was difficult to miss. A nation that could not afford to finish a hospital had produced the world's largest church, administered by Polish Pallottine missionaries at an annual cost of $1.5 million. Ordinary liturgies draw only a few hundred worshippers to a space built for 18,000.

Houphouët-Boigny died in 1993, three years after his basilica's consecration. He had believed it would become a pilgrimage site for African Catholics, drawing the faithful the way Lourdes or Fatima draws European believers. That vision has been slow to materialize, though attendance has grown in recent years, particularly during Christmas celebrations. The building endures as something more complicated than a simple house of worship -- it is a monument to presidential ego wrapped in sacred architecture, a place where the line between devotion and vanity dissolves in stained glass light. Yamoussoukro itself remains a small city, its wide boulevards and grand buildings still waiting for the population that Houphouët-Boigny imagined would fill them.