Notre-Dame: 860 years of glory, fire and resurrection

Before Notre-Dame existed, before Paris existed, there was an island. This island. The Ile de la Cite. Here the Gauls called the Parisii built their first huts more than two thousand years ago. Then came the Romans. They built a temple to Jupiter exactly where the cathedral's main altar stands today. Then came the Franks. The Carolingians. The Capetians. Each civilization built on top of the previous one. And in 1163, Bishop Maurice de Sully had an excessively ambitious idea. A cathedral. The largest. The tallest. The most beautiful man had ever seen. That would last forever. That wou…

Think about 182 years of construction. Today a skyscraper is built in two years. A bridge in five. In 1163 they started on the altar. In 1345 they finished the west facade. In between: eight different reigns. The Black Death. The Hundred Years' War. Entire generations of architects who never met each other. And yet the cathedral maintains an astonishing coherence. Why? Because each architect who took on the project chose to continue the style of the previous one. Not by imposition. By respect. There was something in that project that transcended individuals. An idea bigger than any si…

Look up. The figures you see on the edges of the cathedral fall into two categories. The gargoyles. And the chimeras. The gargoyles are the ones with open mouths. They are functional. Inside each gargoyle runs rainwater. It enters through the rooftops. It exits through the mouth. It is the cathedral's drainage system. It has worked since the 13th century. Eight centuries of hydraulic engineering disguised as monsters. The chimeras are the figures without water channels. They are pure decoration. The most famous ones are in the chimera gallery on the second level. One of them, called L…

In 1831, Notre-Dame was in ruins. Not metaphorically. Literally. After the French Revolution, the cathedral had been vandalized, looted and partially demolished. The bell towers had lost their spires. The statues were decapitated. The stained glass was broken. The government of the time debated whether to demolish it or sell it to the highest bidder. And then Victor Hugo published a novel. Notre-Dame de Paris. In 1831. The story of Quasimodo, the hunchback bell-ringer. And Esmeralda. And Frollo. The novel was an immediate success. It was read across all of Europe. And something happen…

The French Revolution of 1789 was not kind to Notre-Dame. The new regime was anti-clerical. The Church represented the Ancien Regime. Privilege. Monarchy. In 1793 the cathedral was transformed into a Temple of Reason. The image of the Virgin was replaced by a local actress named Mademoiselle Maillard, dressed as the goddess of Reason. The statues of the kings of Judea on the facade were decapitated. The revolutionaries believed they were statues of French kings. A historical error with permanent consequences. The cathedral's treasures were looted to pay for the Republic's wars. The silv…

On December 2nd, 1804, something happened that had not occurred in centuries. An imperial coronation at Notre-Dame. Napoleon Bonaparte had decided to have himself crowned Emperor. Pope Pius VII traveled from Rome for the ceremony. A journey of weeks by carriage. Seventy thousand people came to the cathedral and its surroundings. A solemn mass was celebrated. There were speeches. There was music by Cherubini. And then the moment of the crown arrived. The Pope took the imperial crown. And Napoleon took it from his hands. And placed it on himself. This was not a mistake. It was delibera…

There are three rose windows at Notre-Dame. North, south and west. The north rose window was created around 1250. It is more than thirteen meters in diameter. And it is composed of stained glass that has been filtering light into this cathedral for eight hundred years. Eight hundred years of sunlight entering through the same glass. Generations of baptisms, weddings, funerals, coronations and revolutions. All illuminated by the same pieces of colored glass. How is medieval colored glass made? It is more complicated than it seems. Red came from gold suspended in the molten glass. Blue …

On Monday April 15th 2019 at 6:18 pm the first fire alarm sounded. It was Holy Week. The operators reviewed the cameras and reported they had seen nothing. At 6:43 pm the alarm sounded again. This time they sent someone. It was too late. The fire had started in the wooden framework of the roof. The original 13th century framework, built from oak trees across France. Firefighters arrived within minutes. But the fire spread through that dry wooden ceiling like paper. At 7:50 pm, the central spire collapsed live on air. Thousands of people were crying in the streets of Paris. Cameras fr…

This is where the story of Notre-Dame becomes almost unbelievable. The 2019 fire was devastating. But what survived defied any probability calculation. The three medieval rose windows: intact. The 18th century organ, the 8,000-pipe instrument: intact. The Crown of Thorns that according to Catholic tradition was used in the crucifixion of Jesus: rescued by priest Jean-Marc Fournier, who entered the burning building to retrieve it. The tunic of Saint Louis, King Louis IX: rescued. Two hundred works of art moved in a few hours by brigades of firefighters and volunteers. The Cross that hun…

Notre-Dame opened its doors to the public in December 2024. Five years and eight months after the fire. Exactly as Macron had promised, though the world doubted it. The restoration involved more than 2,000 craftspeople and specialists from across France. Carpenters who used medieval techniques to rebuild the wooden framework. Stained glass makers who analyzed 13th century glass molecule by molecule to understand how to replicate it. Stone carvers who cut new stone from the same region of France as the original. The new spire is an exact copy of Viollet-le-Duc's. But beneath it, invisib…