Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris

The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is a gothic cathedral. it's found on the Eastern side of Paris but the main way to get in is on the West side of the building (Myers, 1957). it's also the seat for the Archbishop of Paris. Viollet-le-Duc is the architect who saved and restored it so that people could still go and see it today. He was very famous in France during his lifetime and most people there still know who he is today. In French, "Notre Dame" means "Our Lady." Notre Dame was among the first of the gothic cathedrals and building it happened over almost the entire gothic period. There is a lot of stained glass in the Cathedral because it was influenced heavily by naturalism (Myers, 1957). It makes it different from the Romanesque architecture that took place earlier in time, and it helps Notre Dame to be distinct and easy to recognize.

The Cathedral has arched supports for the exterior (Michelin, 2003). They are called flying buttresses and they weren't supposed to be there originally but the walls kept getting taller and there were stress cracks starting, so the building needed more support. During the French Revolution in the 1790s the cathedral was desecrated and a lot of the religious images were destroyed or damaged (Michelin, 2003). They were fixed in the 19th century with a big restoration project that brought the Cathedral back to how it looked before. The layout of the Cathedral hasn't changed even when the Cathedral was damaged and then rebuilt. Instead, the damage was just fixed so that the Cathedral looked like it did in the past. Original building of the Cathedral started in 1163. This was the official timeline for construction:

1160 Maurice de Sully, the Bishop of Paris, ordered the original cathedral torn down.

1163 the cornerstone was laid for Notre Dame de Paris.

1182 the apse and the choir were completed.

1196 the nave was completed. Bishop de Sully died.

1200 Work began on the western facade.

1225 the western facade was completed.

1250 the western towers and north rose window were completed.

1260s Transepts were changed to the gothic style.

1250-1345 the remaining elements were finished (Tonazzi, 2007).

It's easy to see that the building took a long time to complete, but it is very beautiful. A lot of different architects worked on it, too, so there are different styles on some of the towers, depending on the height that you look at.

The Notre Dame Cathedral is supposed to be one of the best examples of gothic architecture. The most famous feature is the flying buttresses, but there are others (Tonazzi, 2007). One thing that makes the Cathedral so famous from the standpoint of architecture is the fact that there are different architectural styles from different architects. Sometimes people see this when something has taken a very long time to build, especially for buildings that were built a long time ago when building methods were a lot different.

There is a lot of historical significance to the Notre Dame Cathedral. It was there through World War II, the Paris Commune, and the French Revolution (Tonazzi, 2007). The Huguenots rioted and damaged the Cathedral, too, and there are five bells that are still there and very important to the French people (Tonazzi, 2007). They mark services and important occasions. They used to be rung by hand but they aren't anymore. Now they have electric motors.