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The expanse of sculpted white marble titled “The Poet’s Dream” struck me as pretty awful. Located near the Palais de la Découverte, just off the Champs-Élysées, it depicts 19th-century poet Alfred de Musset swooning over his past lovers — affairs now forever cast in stone, albeit the massive sculpture’s 1910 creator, Alphonse Emmanuel de Moncel de Perrin, is little remembered and rightfully so, or so I thought as I turned to leave. 

Just to the right of his melodramatic tableau, a narrow, higgledy-piggledy stone staircase caught my eye. Making my...

April marks the 10th anniversary of the death of John Paul II, one of the most beloved popes of recent times. During his papacy, from 1978 to 2005, he was the highly visible face of the Catholic Churchas it labored to stay relevant in an increasingly secular world. Today, he is commemorated in statues and paintings throughout the great churches of Europe, from the Cathedral of Sevilla to the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua. When I'm visiting Europe, I often run across one of these shrines.

John Paul II's tomb resides in St. Peter's...