Notre-Dame de Paris

Why it matters

Notre-Dame de Paris stands at the eastern end of the Île de la Cité, the island in the Seine where a trade route crossed the river before there was a city here. It is the cathedral of the Catholic archdiocese of Paris, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture: among the first great buildings to use the rib vault and the flying buttress, with enormous rose windows and sculpture of an abundance and naturalism the older Romanesque churches never had.

It is also a building with an unusual recent history. On 15 April 2019 a fire in the roof destroyed the spire and the medieval oak framework above the vaults. After more than five years of work, the cathedral reopened on 7 December 2024. What you see today is the same stone church, cleaned inside and out, under a roof and a spire rebuilt in the same materials and to the same design.

Eight centuries of building

Bishop Maurice de Sully began the cathedral in 1163, with the cornerstone laid in the presence of King Louis VII and Pope Alexander III. The choir came first; its high altar was consecrated in 1182. The nave followed, with its flying buttresses in place by about 1200, and the towers were raised last, the south tower between about 1220 and 1240 and the north tower between 1235 and 1250. Look carefully from the square and the north tower is slightly larger.

The transepts were lengthened in the middle of the thirteenth century to let in more light, and their two great roses followed, the north about 1250 and the south about 1260. Stone for the vaults, analysis after the fire showed, came from quarries in the Vexin, northwest of Paris, and was probably brought up the Seine by boat.

Revolution, an emperor and a novel

The Revolution treated the cathedral harshly. In 1793 it was rededicated to the Cult of Reason, and the twenty-eight statues of the kings of Judah across the west front, taken for kings of France, were beheaded. Many of the heads turned up in an excavation nearby in 1977 and are now in the Musée de Cluny. For a time the building was used as a warehouse. In 1804 Napoleon was crowned emperor inside it.

By the 1830s Notre-Dame was in such poor condition that demolition was discussed. Victor Hugo's novel of 1831, known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, turned public feeling, and in 1844 a restoration began under Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. It lasted twenty years. Viollet-le-Duc rebuilt the spire, which had been taken down in 1786, and added a good deal of his own invention in the spirit of the Gothic, including the famous creatures on the tower gallery.

The fire and the rebuilding

The fire of April 2019 began in the attic and spread through the forest of oak beams that carried the lead roof. The spire collapsed into the crossing, bringing down about 750 metric tons of stone and lead. Firefighters concentrated on the north tower, where eight of the bells hang, because a collapse there could have brought down both towers; the stone vaults below, for the most part, held.

Rebuilding meant finding the timber first. In 2021 about a thousand mature oaks were chosen from forests across France for the new roof and spire, and left to dry before they could be worked. The cathedral reopened in December 2024, and on 13 December 2024 the relic of the Crown of Thorns, saved from the fire, was brought back.

What you see

Start on the square in front, the parvis, and read the west front from the bottom up. The central portal shows the Last Judgment, the souls of the saved led to heaven on one side and sinners dragged off to hell on the other; the right portal shows the coronation of the Virgin, and the left portal the lives of saints dear to Parisians, especially Saint Anne. All of this sculpture was once painted and gilded. Above runs the gallery of kings, remade in the nineteenth century, and above that the west rose, the first and smallest of the three, about 31 feet across.

Inside, the two transept roses are the reason to walk the length of the nave. The south rose, about 42 feet across, was given by King Louis IX; its ninety-four medallions show Christ surrounded by apostles, martyrs, virgins and angels, and some of its glass is among the oldest in the church. The great organ at the west end was built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll using pipes from earlier instruments and dedicated in 1868.

Then walk around the outside to the east end, where the flying buttresses leap from the chapels to the upper walls. Look up at the roofline as well: the gargoyles, added about 1240, are water spouts, many of them, so that rain leaves the roof in thin streams rather than a torrent.

Under the square

The parvis was opened up to its present size in the 1860s during Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris. The outlines of the medieval streets and buildings that crowded it, including a church demolished in 1747, are marked in pale paving stones on the ground. Beneath the square, the archaeological crypt preserves Roman and medieval foundations found during excavations; it has been run by the Musée Carnavalet since 2000.

The island around the cathedral is small enough to walk in a few minutes. The Sainte-Chapelle stands inside the courthouse to the west, and a footbridge behind the east end leads to the quieter Île Saint-Louis.

How to visit

Allow at least an hour: time on the square to read the portals, time in the nave for the roses, and a slow walk around the outside for the buttresses. The towers are climbed separately, by a stairway of 387 steps, with a stop at the level of the rose window in a Gothic hall; they are not for anyone who dislikes narrow stairs.

The cathedral is a working church as well as a monument, and services continue while visitors are inside, so expect parts of the building to be set aside during mass. The square gets busiest in the middle of the day. For what to reserve in advance across the city, see booking ahead.

Myths worth setting aside

The best-known creatures on Notre-Dame are not medieval. The horned and winged chimeras that lean over the tower gallery, gazing across the city, are nineteenth-century work of Viollet-le-Duc's team. The true medieval gargoyles are the spouts that carry water off the roofs.

Nor did a bell-ringer called Quasimodo ever live in the north tower. He belongs to Victor Hugo's novel, though the novel is real enough in another way: without the attention it drew in 1831, the restoration that saved the building might never have begun.