Stade de France is built on the site of an old gasworks and can be cold and uninviting. But when it is rocking the atmosphere is astonishing.
It’s coliseum-like, the soundtrack to Gladiator, a tough, tough place to be for players of the opposing team.
Now imagine France need just win there today to pick up a first Six Nations title and Grand Slam for 12 years.
That is the scenario confronting England, a team which has lost to Scotland and Ireland and could finish fifth in the table for a second consecutive year.
I played and lost there with England in 1998 to a French side en route to a Grand Slam. You don’t easily forget days like that.
French crowds, however, are notoriously fickle. If they don’t like what they’re seeing they can be just as vocal, but in a negative way. They’re not shy about letting their team know.
This is England’s glimmer of hope. On paper they don’t win this game. France are the form side in world rugby, joint favourites for next year’s World Cup.
But this generation of players has yet to win a trophy. And that is a big ‘but’.
It applies a pressure they haven’t felt before and it can play into England’s hands if they understand the occasion and that the nature of one-off games changes the way you think and play.
Look at the second half against Wales and the way the weight of expectation almost stopped France playing. Now consider that that weight will be up another notch tonight.
So for England it’s not about trying to find what your attacking shape looks like, rather playing the contest: understanding the pressure on France and what that’s going to do to their psyche.
Eddie Jones’ team have to force them into places where they’re uncomfortable, get them nervous.
Give them no cheap ins, no easy points. Leave them with no option other than to feel they must chance their arm.
England are proper underdogs this time, not the fake ones they claimed to be at home to Ireland.
They are going to have to defend for their lives, compete in the set-piece with the same bloody-minded resolve they did a week ago and of course keep a full team on the field.
I can see the game being as tight as a drum and England giving them a fright. But it’s going to take something special to turn the crowd against this team.
Genuinely, country wide, there is a unity between crowd and team that I’ve not seen in France before. I expect that to get them over the line.
