Word: sacred
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Despite his wealth, Floirat lives simply. He and wife Julia maintain a modest Montmartre apartment with a view of Sacré Coeur. Floirat owns a Rolls-Royce, but prefers a Citroën. He summers in the Périgord, where he grows apples and walnuts experimentally to establish new money crops. Floirat has also helped to revive the dying truffle industry. Natives insisted that a virus had wiped out truffles; Floirat proved that they would reflourish if the oak groves where they grew were thinned and the soil cultivated. Soon to be honored by the Périgourdins...
...afterward. Now the graceful Parisian skyline will be altered even more drastically-by a proposed 55-story office building that will loom over Saint-Germain-des-Prés like an enormous elliptical cigarette case, dwarf Notre Dame and top out 20 feet higher than the lofty tip of Sacré-Coeur...
Some Like It Dirty. Inevitably, the big cleanup has divided Paris into two camps: black and white. At the start, white was a dirty word, particularly since Montmartre's white Sacré-Coeur basilica has long been regarded as a bulbous eyesore. When it was suggested that Notre-Dame be scoured, a venerable member of the Paris city council counterproposed: "Paint Sacré-Coeur black instead." Notre-Dame may yet remain the great unwashed building, since architects fear that its 800-year-old lacy filigree would crumble. The pro-blacks argue that character, dignity and age are lost...
Generally Parisians approve of sending the city to the cleaners. But one landmark raises doubts: Notre-Dame Cathedral, waiting defiantly in all its historic and original grime. Says venerable Municipal Councilor Armand Massard: "It would be better to blacken Sacré-Coeur. that ugly cream cheese." Middle-of-the-rue opinion advocates a rinsing that will not render Notre-Dame stark white but merely wash behind the gargoyles' ears...
Within hours, the Corsican and North African hoods who control Parisian prostitution and crime began oiling their revolvers as they eyed the tempting spoils. Lodged high on the shoulder of Montmartre, just below the soaring domes of the Cathédrale du Sacré-Coeur, the Place Pigalle by day is a dreary, working-class square crowded with Algerians. At night, the square and the nearby alleys blossom into neon brilliance, offer to any passer-by probably the tawdriest and most expansive display of nude female flesh the world has seen since the passing of the Babylonian slave market. Prostitutes...