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The first
A bishop pulled down the old cathedral to build this one
In 1160 Bishop Maurice de Sully decided to build a new and much larger church. He demolished the earlier cathedral and recycled its materials, and the cornerstone was laid in 1163 in the presence of King Louis VII and Pope Alexander III.
1163the year the cornerstone was laid
The trick
The weight of the roof went outside the walls
Before the flying buttress, the weight of the roof pressed outward and down onto the walls. Carrying it on ribs outside the building let the walls rise higher and thinner, with larger windows. Laser scans by the art historian Andrew Tallon found the upper part of the building had not moved in 800 years.
“That most glorious church of the most glorious Virgin Mary, mother of God, deservedly shines out, like the sun among stars.”
John of Jandun, Treatise on the Praises of Paris, 1323
The book
A novel was written to save it from demolition
In the decades after the Napoleonic Wars the cathedral fell into such disrepair that Paris officials considered demolishing it. Victor Hugo wrote his novel in 1831 to save it, and in 1844 King Louis Philippe I ordered a restoration led by Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.
The fire
A fire in April 2019 destroyed the spire and the roof
On 15 April 2019 a fire destroyed the flèche and the oak roof beams. Firefighters saved the façade, towers, walls, buttresses and stained-glass windows, and the stone vaulting was left with several holes. The cathedral reopened on 7 December 2024.
Day 1, midday
It comes after Sainte-Chapelle. Then Jardin du Luxembourg.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Notre-Dame de Paris, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.