Notre-Dame de Paris


Notre-Dame de Paris, often referred to simply as Notre-Dame, is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Paris.
The cathedral, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, is considered one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. Several attributes set it apart from the earlier Romanesque style, including its pioneering use of the rib vault and flying buttress, its enormous and colourful rose windows, and the naturalism and abundance of its sculptural decoration. Notre-Dame is also exceptional for its three pipe organs and its immense church bells.
The construction of the cathedral began in 1163 under Bishop Maurice de Sully and was largely completed by 1260, though it was modified in succeeding centuries. In the 1790s, during the French Revolution, Notre-Dame suffered extensive desecration; much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. In the 19th century, the cathedral hosted the coronation of Napoleon and the funerals of many of the French Republic's presidents. The 1831 publication of Victor Hugo's novel Notre-Dame de Paris inspired interest which led to restoration between 1844 and 1864, supervised by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. On 26 August 1944, the Liberation of Paris from German occupation was celebrated in Notre-Dame with the singing of the Magnificat. Beginning in 1963, the cathedral's façade was cleaned of soot and grime. Another cleaning and restoration project was carried out between 1991 and 2000. A fire in April 2019 caused serious damage, closing the cathedral for extensive and costly repairs; it reopened in December 2024.
Notre-Dame is a widely recognised symbol of both the city of Paris and the French nation. In 1805, Pope Pius VII awarded it honorary status as a minor basilica. As the cathedral of the archdiocese of Paris, Notre-Dame contains the cathedra or seat of the archbishop of Paris. In the early 21st century, about 12 million people visited Notre-Dame annually, making it the most visited monument in Paris.
Since 1905, Notre-Dame, like the other cathedrals in France, has been owned by the French government, with the exclusive rights of use granted to the French Roman Catholic Church. The French government is responsible for its maintenance.
Over time, the cathedral has gradually been stripped of many decorations and artworks. It still contains Gothic, Baroque, and 19th-century sculptures, 17th- and early 18th-century altarpieces, and some of the most important relics in Christendom, including the crown of thorns, and a sliver and nail from the True Cross.

Key dates

4th century – Cathedral of Saint Étienne, dedicated to Saint Stephen, built just west of present cathedral
  • 1163 – Bishop Maurice de Sully begins construction of new cathedral.
  • 1182 or 1185 – Choir completed, clerestory with two levels: upper level of upright windows with pointed arches, still without tracery, lower level of small rose windows.
  • – Construction of nave, with flying buttresses, completed.
  • –1220 – Construction of towers begins.
  • –1220 – Two new traverses join towers with nave. West rose window complete in 1220.
  • After 1220 – New flying buttresses added to choir walls, remodeling of the clerestories: pointed arched windows are enlarged downward, replacing the triforia, and get tracery.
  • 1235–1245 – Chapels constructed between buttresses of nave and choir.
  • 1250–1260 – North transept lengthened by Jean de Chelles to provide more light. North rose window constructed.
  • 1270 – South transept and rose window completed by Pierre de Montreuil.
  • 1699 – Beginning of major redecoration of interior in Louis XIV style by Hardouin Mansart and Robert de Cotte.
  • 1725–1727 – South rose window, poorly built, is reconstructed. Later entirely rebuilt in 1854.
  • 1790 – In the French Revolution the Revolutionary Paris Commune removes all bronze, lead, and precious metals from the cathedral to be melted down.
  • 1793 – The cathedral is converted into a Temple of Reason and then Temple of the Supreme Being.
  • 1801–1802 – With the Concordat of 1801, Napoleon restores the use of the cathedral to the Catholic Church.
  • 1804 – On 2 December, Napoleon crowns himself Emperor at Notre-Dame.
  • 1844–1864 – Major restoration by Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc with additions in the spirit of the original Gothic style.
  • 1871 – In final days of the Paris Commune, the Communards prepared to burn the cathedral, but abandoned their plan since it would necessarily also burn the crowded neighboring hospital for the elderly.
  • 1944 – On 26 August, General Charles de Gaulle celebrates the Liberation of Paris with a special Mass at Notre-Dame.
  • 1963 – Culture Minister André Malraux begins the cleaning of centuries of grime and soot from the cathedral façade.
  • 2019 – On 15 April, a fire destroys a large part of the roof and the flèche.
  • 2021 – Reconstruction begins, which lasted 3 years.
  • 2024 – Reopening ceremonies 7–8 December. On 13 December 2024 the revered Crown of Thorns relic was returned to the cathedral.

    History

It is believed that before the arrival of Christianity in France, a Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter stood on the site of Notre-Dame. Evidence for this includes the Pillar of the Boatmen, discovered beneath the cathedral in 1710. In the 4th or 5th century, a large early Christian church, the Cathedral of Saint Étienne, was built on the site, close to the royal palace. The entrance was situated about west of the present west front of Notre-Dame, and the apse was located about where the west façade is today. It was roughly half the size of the later Notre-Dame, long—and separated into nave and four aisles by marble columns, then decorated with mosaics.
The last church before the cathedral of Notre-Dame was a Romanesque remodelling of Saint-Étienne that, although enlarged and remodelled, was found to be unfit for the growing population of Paris. A baptistery, the Church of Saint-John-le-Rond, built about 452, was located on the north side of the west front of Notre-Dame until the work of Jacques-Germain Soufflot in the 18th century.
In 1160, the bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, decided to build a new and much larger church. He summarily demolished the earlier cathedral and recycled its materials. Sully decided that the new church should be built in the Gothic style, which had been inaugurated at the royal abbey of Saint Denis in the late 1130s.

Construction

The chronicler recorded in the Memorial Historiarum that the construction of Notre-Dame began between 24 March and 25 April 1163 with the laying of the cornerstone in the presence of King Louis VII and Pope Alexander III. Four phases of construction took place under bishops Maurice de Sully and Eudes de Sully, according to masters whose names have been lost. Analysis of vault stones that fell in the 2019 fire shows that they were quarried in Vexin, a county northwest of Paris, and presumably brought up the Seine by boat.
Five years after the devastating fire, Notre-Dame de Paris formally reopened with a two hour ceremony inside its newly renovated interior following an estimated $739 million restoration. This was then followed by an event that was attended by global leaders including French president Emmanuel Macron and US president-elect Donald Trump. This celebration honoured the successful completion of the 2,000-plus day rebuilding effort that destroyed the spire and wooden roof structure. Macron hailed the cathedral as a metaphor for the nation's ability to "accomplish the impossible".
File:Coupe.transversale.cathedrale.Paris.png|thumb|left|Cross-section of the double supporting arches and buttresses of the nave, drawn by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc as they would have appeared from 1220 to 1230
The first phase began with the construction of the choir and its two ambulatories. According to Robert of Torigni, the choir was completed in 1177 and the high altar consecrated on 19 May 1182 by Cardinal Henri de Château-Marçay, the Papal legate in Paris, and Maurice de Sully. The second phase, from 1182 to 1190, concerned the construction of the four sections of the nave behind the choir and its aisles to the height of the clerestories. It began after the completion of the choir but ended before the final allotted section of the nave was finished. Beginning in 1190, the bases of the façade were put in place, and the first traverses were completed. Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem called for the Third Crusade in 1185 from the still-incomplete cathedral.
Louis IX deposited the relics of the passion of Christ, which included the crown of thorns, a nail from the True Cross and a sliver of the True Cross, which he had purchased at great expense from the Latin Emperor Baldwin II, in the cathedral during the construction of the Sainte-Chapelle. An under-shirt, believed to have belonged to Louis, was added to the collection of relics at some time after his death.
Transepts were added at the choir, where the altar was located, in order to bring more light into the centre of the church. The use of simpler four-part rather than six-part rib vaults meant that the roofs were stronger and could be higher. After Bishop Maurice de Sully's death in 1196, his successor, Eudes de Sully oversaw the completion of the transepts, and continued work on the nave, which was nearing completion at the time of his death in 1208. By this time, the western façade was already largely built; it was completed around the mid-1240s. Between 1225 and 1250 the upper gallery of the nave was constructed, along with the two towers on the west façade.
Another significant change came in the mid-13th century, when the transepts were remodelled in the latest Rayonnant style; in the late 1240s Jean de Chelles added a gabled portal to the north transept topped by a spectacular rose window. Shortly afterward Pierre de Montreuil executed a similar scheme on the southern transept. Both these transept portals were richly embellished with sculpture; the south portal depicts scenes from the lives of Saint Stephen and of various local saints, and the north portal featured the infancy of Christ and the story of Theophilus in the tympanum, with a highly influential statue of the Virgin and Child in the trumeau. Master builders Pierre de Chelles,, Jean le Bouteiller, and succeeded de Chelles and de Montreuil and then each other in the construction of the cathedral. Ravy completed de Chelles's rood screen and chevet chapels, then began the flying buttresses of the choir. Jean le Bouteiller, Ravy's nephew, succeeded him in 1344 and was himself replaced on his death in 1363 by his deputy, Raymond du Temple.
Philip the Fair opened the first Estates General in the cathedral in 1302.
An important innovation in the 12th century was the introduction of the flying buttress. Before the buttresses, all of the weight of the roof pressed outward and down to the walls, and the abutments supporting them. With the flying buttress, the weight was carried by the ribs of the vault entirely outside the structure to a series of counter-supports, which were topped with stone pinnacles which gave them greater weight. The buttresses meant that the walls could be higher and thinner, and could have larger windows. The date of the first buttresses is not known with precision beyond an installation date in the 12th century. Art historian Andrew Tallon has argued, based on detailed laser scans of the entire structure, that the buttresses were part of the original design. According to Tallon, the scans indicate that "the upper part of the building has not moved one smidgen in 800 years," whereas if they were added later some movement from prior to their addition would be expected. Tallon thus concluded that flying buttresses were present from the outset. The first buttresses were replaced by larger and stronger ones in the 14th century; these had a reach of between the walls and counter-supports.
John of Jandun recognized the cathedral as one of Paris's three most important buildings in his 1323 Treatise on the Praises of Paris: