The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris will reopen on Dec. 8, 2024, the traditional day for honoring the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is a fitting day since the cathedral is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary (“Notre Dame” means “Our Lady” in French). This magnificent Gothic structure—one of the most famous churches in the world—is about to emerge like a butterfly from its chrysalis of reconstruction following a devastating fire in 2019.
Notre-Dame is linked to the soul of France, standing as a symbol of the country’s religious and political life through the centuries. It marks the heart of France both literally and figuratively: A plaque outside the cathedral indicates that it’s the point from which all roads in France begin.
A Marker of World History
Built to direct humanity’s eyes toward heaven and eternity through its surging spires, buttresses, and glittering stained glass, the massive structure has continued to soar into the sky century after century, unmoved by the sea changes of the world and often forming the backdrop of key events in French and world history.According to “The Age of Chivalry,” a book put out by National Geographic, Notre-Dame was the site where the Third Crusade was first preached; the place where Henry VI became King of France; the church where King Philip IV rode his horse to the altar to offer thanks for a military victory; the home for Jesus’s Crown of Thorns, brought back by St. Louis from Jerusalem in 1239; the symbol that the French revolutionaries tried to transform into a temple of reason in the 18th century; the structure in which Napoleon crowned himself emperor; and the church whose bells rang out over Paris in 1944 to mark the city’s liberation during World War II.
The building’s story begins in the 4th century when a warlike Frankish King, Clovis, converted to Christianity. Paris became the capital of the kingdom of the Franks, one of the first Christian European kingdoms. In the 6th century, Paris’s first cathedral, Saint-Etienne, was erected. As the centuries rolled by, Paris grew in size and cultural stature, becoming a hub of intellectual and artistic activity. It boasted one of the first and most famous of European universities, the University of Paris.
Pilgrimages and crusades in the 12th century made Paris—and specifically the Ile de la Cité, an island in the Seine River—a high-traffic area. The large number of pilgrims inspired the Bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, to begin plans for construction of a massive cathedral on the ruins of two earlier basilicas. Pope Alexander III laid the foundation stone in 1163. De Sully funneled money and resources into the project, and the pious people of France, from serfs to kings, donated to the effort. As “The Age of Chivalry” relates: “Women of Paris, mindful of Our Lady, gave so often they prompted a legend that Notre-Dame was ‘built by widows’ mites.’”
(Top) The arrival of Napoleon at the east end of Notre-Dame for his coronation as emperor of the French on Dec. 2 1804, by Charles Percier and Pierre François Léonard Fontaine. (Bottom Left) An illustration of the western façade and parvis of Notre-Dame in 1699. (Bottom Right) A painting of Henry VI of England's coronation in Notre-Dame, circa 1470 to 1490, by an unknown artist. Henry was crowned the king of France at age 10, during the Hundred Years' War. Public Domain
Bishop de Sully wouldn’t see his work finished. The cathedral was a generational project that took almost 200 years to build. When completed, it stood as a testament to the brilliance of medieval engineers, the skill of medieval artists, and the aspirations of medieval society as a whole. “The Age of Chivalry” has quotes from one 14th-century visitor: “On entering one feels as if ravished to heaven, and ushered into one of the most beautiful chambers of paradise.” Many centuries later, Victor Hugo described the building as “crowding upward before the eye … a vast symphony of stone.”
Notre-Dame is considered a jewel of Gothic architecture, a style involving an almost reckless extravagance of masonry rising skyward and adorned with innumerable figures from the Bible and Catholic tradition, including the famous gargoyles.
Enduring Tribulations
The cathedral has seen its fair share of upheaval and danger. During the French Revolution, deeply anti-Catholic sentiments swept through France, and revolutionaries stripped Notre-Dame of its significance as a Catholic church, transforming it into “Our Lady of Reason,” a monument to Enlightenment rationalism. Revolutionaries mistook some statues of biblical kings for French monarchs and beheaded the figures out of their hatred for the French aristocracy. The kings’ heads were found during a Parisian neighborhood renovation in 1977. It was only the downfall of revolutionary-in-chief Maximilien Robespierre that spared the cathedral from total demolition.
In the 19th century, the damage the cathedral sustained from the revolution and the weather threatened to bring it crumbling down, but Napoleon’s patronage, the popularity of Victor Hugo’s novel “Notre-Dame de Paris,” and the work of French architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc brought about its restoration.
But perhaps the cathedral’s greatest challenge came on April 15, 2019. In an ironic twist, it was during a restoration project that a conflagration destroyed much of the building, including its central spire. As the flames dissolved the spire, sending smoke billowing on high, the people of Paris gathered in the streets, staring in shock at the inferno consuming their beloved national symbol. Some wept. Then, amid the tears, Parisians began to sing to the Blessed Virgin, “Ave Maria.”
Combination photographs show Notre-Dame Cathedral on fire (top row) and rebuilt (bottom row), from the same angles, taken in Paris between April 15, 2019, and Nov. 30, 2024. Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt, Kiran Ridley, Fabien Barrau /AFP via Getty Images
Describing the reaction of the French to the burning of Notre-Dame, the man in charge of the building’s restoration, the late Jean-Louis Georgelin, said: “A lot of people in France cried because they feel that something very deep in the soul of France, in the spirit of France was about to collapse.” But the Paris fire brigades saved the cathedral from total collapse, and President Emmanuel Macron immediately promised the cathedral would be rebuilt.
It’s the fulfillment of that promise that the world awaits on Dec. 8. The event will demonstrate the resilience of France and the way that the spirit of the French people lives on, reconnecting them with their past.
In the words of Georgelin, “The Cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris is in some way the heart of France. For the Catholic, of course, for the Christian, but for everybody. All the great events of France in some way or another took place here in the cathedral.”
Attendees, including workers of the reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris, gather during a speech by French President Emmanuel Macron (C) in the nave of the cathedral in Paris, on Nov. 29, 2024. SARAH MEYSSONNIER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
What arts and culture topics would you like us to cover? Please email ideas or feedback to [email protected]
