Notre-Dame de Paris

Notre-Dame de Paris was built over roughly two centuries beginning around 1163 under Bishop Maurice de Sully, on the site of earlier churches at the eastern tip of Île de la Cité, and stands as one of the defining works of French Gothic architecture, notable for its early use of flying buttresses to support a taller, thinner-walled nave than earlier Romanesque churches allowed. The west facade's three portals, the rose windows (the north rose largely retains its 13th-century glass), and the gallery of kings, whose original heads were removed and beheaded during the Revolution before being rediscovered in 1977 and now displayed at the Musée de Cluny, all date substantially from the 12th and 13th centuries. The cathedral was the site of Napoleon's 1804 coronation as emperor and, in the 19th century, had fallen into disrepair before Victor Hugo's 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris helped spark public support for its restoration, carried out from 1844 by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus, who added the 96-meter spire that replaced one removed in the 18th century. On 15 April 2019, a fire that started in the roof structure destroyed the spire and most of the lead-and-timber roof, though the stone vaults, towers, and the majority of the treasury, including the Crown of Thorns, were saved. A five-year, roughly €700 million restoration, funded largely by international donations, rebuilt the spire and roof to Viollet-le-Duc's design using traditional oak-frame carpentry, and the cathedral reopened to the public in December 2024. The interior nave is free to visit; access to the towers and any temporary exhibition spaces is managed separately.