L’Odyssée Céleste – When Churches Become Storytellers

NATJA IGNEY

4 hours ago

L’Odyssée Céleste at Basilica de Nice - photo © Mikhail Sytenkov

A new immersive 3D experience in Nice, L’Odyssée Céleste, transforms sacred architecture into living narrative through light, sound, and technology

Have you ever heard it said that buildings absorb into their walls what happens inside them? Have you maybe even experienced this sensation for yourself? Then you will be able to imagine the stories a church can tell, the stalwart custodian of history steeped in prayers, celebrations, weddings, christenings, and funerals of generations of worshippers. If you are not convinced of this metaphysical transubstantiation, the new immersive L’Odyssée Céleste 3D light and sound show by Luminiscence may persuade you otherwise.

The Basilica of Notre-Dame de l’Assomption on Avenue Jean Médecin has watched over Nice since 1879 as the city transformed around it. It withstood an earthquake and two world wars, and in 2020 became the site of a knife attack that killed three people. All that history is there, pressed into the stone and stained glass. But monuments don’t speak… they are just the silent, stalwart witnesses of life that happens around them.

Or do they?

In L’Odyssée Céleste, the immersive 3D light and sound show, the basilica comes to life. In the half-darkness before the show begins, the old walls seem to hold their breath, then they exhale. From somewhere in the vaulted ceiling, a voice emerges… not human, not quite divine. The basilica itself is speaking. It is answering the questions that a child who has wandered into its nave asks, curious about everything this place has witnessed. It reminisces about the glorious days but does not shy away from the dark side of history either.

The conversation unfolds over 45 minutes, and through it the basilica becomes the living memory of Nice’s history. It reaches back to the city’s beginnings as a humble trading port, first for the Greek, then the Romans. It recounts the five centuries under Savoy, and the crucial moment in 1860 when Napoleon III and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia sealed the annexation that made Nice French. It remembers the Garibaldian revolts, the earthquake that came just eight years after its completion, the darkness of Occupation and the relief of Liberation in 1944. In 1978, Pope Paul VI elevated it from church to basilica, and that, too, becomes part of the story.

The Magic Amalgamate of Light, Voice, and Sacred Space

Opening on November 28, Luminiscence’s production of light, sound, and live music transforms the entire basilica interior with floor-to-ceiling video projections and spatial audio. This represents a fundamental shift from its earlier show, which had architect Charles Lenormand narrate the building’s construction. That version told the story of how the basilica came to be. This one assumes it has always been conscious, always watching – and now finally finds its own voice.

Studio Lotchi’s video mapping makes that consciousness visible. Projections cover every surface from floor to pillars, arches, and vaulted ceiling, and transform the neo-Gothic architecture through animated light to create the illusion of stone breathing, shifting, and coming alive.

A new score composed by Samuel Sené and Guillaume Coignard draws from the deep well of classical and sacred music, and on weekends the Camerata Apollonia choir performs it live, their voices carried through a three-dimensional sound system calibrated specifically for the basilica’s acoustics. When those voices lift into the vaults while light moves across 145-year-old stone, the space stops being backdrop and becomes the story itself.

Co-founder Romain Sarfati describes Luminescence’s mission as making heritage something felt rather than observed, and L’Odyssée Céleste pushes that idea as far as it will go. The production doesn’t ask you to appreciate the basilica’s architecture or learn about its history, it just asks you to sit in darkness while you overhear a conversation.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Charles Lenormand designed the basilica in neo-Gothic style, inspired by Notre-Dame de Paris and the Abbey of Saint-Serge d’Angers. Classified as a historical monument in 1975, it has been restored multiple times to preserve the stained glass, the stonework, and the architectural details that Lenormand imagined. It remains both active place of worship and cultural landmark, serving the spiritual life of Nice while also anchoring its sense of history and identity.

Its twin 31-metre towers are now the defining landmark on what is now Nice’s busiest commercial street.

Running from the train station to Place Masséna, avenue Jean Médecin is a river of shops and cafés and pedestrian traffic that during the holiday season becomes almost overwhelming in its energy and noise. The basilica sits at the heart of all that chaos. Crossing its threshold is a stark contrast from a world of commerce into contemplation, from the contemporary city into a space that holds layers of time.

This is the second time that Luminiscence returns to Nice, after a triumphant first show which drew 80,000 visitors. Since 2023, the studio’s shows have drawn more than a million spectators at cathedral sites across France and internationally, and the company directs a generous portion of ticket revenues toward conservation.

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But beyond the numbers and the conservation funding, what Luminiscence aims for is something more difficult to quantify: making people feel a building’s presence not as object but as subject, not as setting but as character. The dialogue between child and basilica, the projections that enhance the architecture, the live choir that fills the space with sounds you feel on a visceral level… the visitor is no longer passive onlooker but becomes part of the story.

For those who live in Nice, the show offers a way to encounter their city’s complicated history through a building that has been part of their own history. And for anyone willing to sit in the dark and listen, it asks a question that most heritage sites never pose: What would these buildings say if they could speak? What have they learned from watching us live and die and build and destroy around them?