French Third Republic

The Eglise de la Madeleine sits as a massive, windowless rectangle surrounded by fifty-two towering Corinthian columns. It looks like a Greek temple dropped into the center of Paris. Napoleon Bonaparte ordered its construction in eighteen hundred and six as a temple of glory for his Grande Armee. When the empire collapsed, the new regime turned the half-finished structure into a church. It took nearly forty years to complete, finally opening in eighteen forty-two with a design that rejects typical Christian architecture.