A comprehensive study of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris from an historic, artistic and technical perspective.
Two perfect towers, a sublime kings’ gallery, slender vaults held up by a lacework of stone, a startling series of chapels, Notre-Dame remains France’s most emblematic monument and a paragon of gothic art. It is a cathedral whose universal presence touched millions of people at the time of the terrible fire of 15 April 2019.
Capturing its singularity, the cathedral’s best historian Dany Sandron offers us much more than a history of the building and its metamorphoses over the last two and a half centuries. In this fascinating and scholarly work, he goes back to the roots of the church’s ancient, quasi-original success when it was commanded by a self-confident elite. Above all, he guides us through the “worlds” that Notre-Dame sheltered and those with which it mixed: the episcopal palace of the high clergy of Maurice de Sully of course, the canons’ cloister and the Hotel-Dieu (general hospital), as well as the spaces where the crowds of faithful were welcomed. As the pre-eminent specialist of medieval Paris, Dany Sandron highlights too the cathedral’s intimate relationship with the town, its gigantic size and its architectural significance, much of which was lost to the developments of the 19th century. And by broadening this point of view, he shows how much Notre-Dame owes its success to the way in which the different powers presented themselves, in particular that of the King; and how the cathedral became a privileged point of reference on the same scale as the city, the diocese and also, for a time, the royal domain.
Across this framework of links and relationships, it is the spirit of Notre-Dame that rises up to take centre stage.
