The work of Victor Hugo’s “Notre Dame de Paris”, which tells the story of Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, allowed to rediscover this beautiful gothic cathedral.
Notre Dame de Paris is undoubtedly one of the symbols of the city. While not the largest cathedral in France, is one of his most remarkable Gothic art.
Situated on the eastern side of Ile de la Cité, its facade faces west and overlooks the Place Notre Dame, where the zero point from which all distances are counted from France. Their dimensions reach the 130 meters long and 48 meters wide and a total height of 69 meters.
The facade has three portals. The Portal of the Last Judgement, the most important center, shows sculptures representing the resurrection of the dead, an angel with a weighing scale virtues and sins and demons that put their sinful souls, images that have undoubtedly had great weight in the unconscious popular in the Middle Ages. The two side portals were consecrated to the Virgin Mary and St. Anne, her mother.About 20 feet above the ground, a gallery of 28 statues rises above the portals. Each statue, 3.5 meters high, representing the 28 kings of Judah who preceded the coming of Christ. Of the original medieval statues only fragments remain, as it were destroyed during the Revolution represented the belief that French kings.
On the central portal highlights the large stained glass circular rosette of almost 10 meters in diameter, one of the most notorious of the facade. However, this window is the largest cathedral, and the north and south facades have windows of 13 meters in diameter. Above the rosette, a row of columns and then the two bell towers round the west side.
The place where the cathedral was a long time before construction linked to religious activities.
The Celtic tribe of the Parisii, the first inhabitants of the island, apparently celebrating their rituals there and later the Romans had built a temple to Jupiter. The first Christian church built would then honor Saint Etienne, and on it a Romanesque church, which is that lasted until 1163, the year the Archbishop Maurice de Sully decided to build the cathedral.
Notre Dame Cathedral
The construction coincided with a period of prosperity and increasing dominance of the city, so the work should reflect this power. Thus, the building was done without interruption by economic problems, but was closed only in the mid-fourteenth century, after many modifications and interventions by different architects and craftsmen.
The turbulent history, the ravages of time and new architectural trends made the Cathedral undergone numerous modifications and restorations, most notably launched in 1844 by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus, which lasted for 23 years. More recently, in 1965, excavations under the cathedral revealed the existence of catacombs of Roman and medieval rooms.
Victor Hugo wrote in 1831 his novel “Notre Dame de Paris.” By placing the events in the cathedral during the Middle Ages, the story of Quasimodo, the hunchback who falls for the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda and suffers the harassment of his uncle Frola. His poetic illustration of the architecture of the cathedral enabled many to discover a different way.