Cathédrale Saint-Paul du Plateau

The Cathédrale Saint-Paul du Plateau, seat of the Archdiocese of Abidjan, was commissioned by President Félix Houphouët-Boigny and designed by the Italian architect Aldo Spirito, who had also worked on the Ivoire hotel complex. Pope John Paul II laid the foundation stone during a visit in 1980, and the cathedral was completed and dedicated on 10 August 1985, a project that paralleled Houphouët-Boigny's later, larger basilica at Yamoussoukro. The building's triangular plan and its silhouette, read by many as an abstracted figure of Saint Paul holding a cross, was a deliberate departure from conventional cathedral architecture, using cable-stayed structural engineering, steel cables anchored to a tall central mast, to suspend and support the roof over a 4,200 m² interior that seats 4,500 with standing room for a further 1,500. A cross rising about 70 metres above the building is visible across much of the Plateau and lagoon. Roughly 370 m² of stained glass, set into the sweeping concrete and glass facade, narrates episodes in the history of Catholicism in Côte d'Ivoire, from early missionary contact through to the modern archdiocese, and forms the cathedral's principal artistic feature alongside its engineering. The building has required ongoing maintenance of its cable structure and glass since completion but remains in active liturgical use, hosting the Archbishop of Abidjan's principal services as well as major state and civic ceremonies. Its site on the ridge above the lagoon in Le Plateau places it among the cluster of major public buildings, the CCIA tower, government ministries and the Hôtel Ivoire's skyline view, that define the modern civic identity of central Abidjan.