The Cathedral of Notre-Dame
Notre-Dame is a Gothic
masterpiece on the Île de la Cité in the Seine. The site on which it
stands has been a place of worship since Roman times, when a temple to
Jupiter was built here. Later the Merovingians, who ruled Gaul from about
500-751 AD, built the cathedral of St-Etienne on the same site.
Notre-Dame itself was founded in 1160 by Maurice de Sully, the Bishop of
Paris, and its foundation stone was laid by Pope Alexander III. The
building took almost 200 years to complete.
The glory of the cathedral is its facade, with its lovely rose window and
gallery above, and the flying buttresses to the side, holding up the
choir. There are three magnificent entrances: to the left is the Portal
of the Virgin, with signs of the zodiac and the coronation of the Virgin
Mary: to the right is the Portal of St Anne, which features the Virgin
and Child - possibly the cathedral's finest piece of sculpture; and the
central Portal depicts the Last Judgement.
Inside the cathedral the end walls of the transepts are a mass of glass,
including two more fabulous rose windows in imperial purple. The light
that falls on the sanctuary is in great contrast to the darkness of the
soaring nave. In the 1820s the cathedral went through some major
restoration, partly through the popularity of Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de
Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) and partly through a
nineteenth-century revival of interest in Gothic architecture. The
architect, Viollet-le-Duc, added the steeple and the gargoyles, which you
can get a good look at if you can face walking up the 387 steps of the
tower.
