Paris, Notre Dame

Completed about 1345, Notre Dame Cathedral was almost consigned to the scrap heap of history a few centuries later. Fortunately, Napoléon Bonaparte decided he needed an ecclesiastical masterpiece as a properly impressive setting for his coronation, so this beautiful Gothic edifice was preserved.

For the past 2000 years a church had stood at this spot, but it was a much-dilapidated building where Napoléon crowned himself Emperor of France, in 1804. In 1841 Viollet-le-Duc (architect-archeologist) began the twenty-three year effort needed to restore Notre Dame to its architectural glory.

The front of Notre Dame in Paris is neat and symmetrical in design and devoid of frilly decoration. While similar in general detail, the facade of Notre Dame in Reims is replete with lacy frills, and the towers at Notre Dame at Amiens and at the Notre Dame in Chartres, do not match, and their facade is not symmetrical in design, as is Paris.