This weekend marks a new milestone in the thousand-year history of Notre-Dame de Paris. “This is it,” said an excited Emmanuel Macron, on November 29, when he visited the cathedral a week before its official reopening. “The shock of the reopening will be, I believe – and I want to believe – as strong as that of the fire, but it will be a shock of hope,” he said.
These words look to the future, but as the building rises from the ashes, what of its past? The World revisits its history through 10 key dates that have helped to shape the legend of this cathedral that has become a symbol of France itself.
6th century: The basilica before the cathedral
A plaque on the stones of Notre-Dame’s parvis discreetly celebrates a centenary: the famous “point zéro des routes de France” (“kilometer zero of France’s roads”) was installed here in 1924. In a way, it also marks the cathedral’s “point zéro”: During excavations in 1847 beneath this parvis, traces of an ancient church were found. Mosaics, capitals and other remains unearthed during subsequent excavations gradually revealed Cathedral Saint-Étienne. According to some hypotheses, this cathedral could itself have been built on a Gallo-Roman place of worship.
The importance of this Merovingian cathedral, likely built during the reign of Clovis I’s son, the Frankish king Childebert I (511-558), can be seen in its grand scale: A 35-meter facade, a length of 70 meters, and five aisles (a nave and two pairs of side aisles, possibly in imitation of a church in Rome or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre).
1163: The first stone of a Gothic jewel
Saint-Étienne Cathedral was in decline. Having been gradually abandoned in the 9th century, it was a mere ruin by the start of the 12th century – but then Maurice de Sully (1120-1196) became the bishop of Paris. An influential figure in the court of King Louis VII (1137-1180), Bishop de Sully, who would found and support a number of churches, abbeys and dioceses during his tenure, decided to start the construction of a great cathedral in honor of the Virgin Mary. The first stone was laid in 1163 in the presence of Pope Alexander III (1159-1181), launching a project as colossal as the building itself – it would span two centuries.
There were two main construction periods. The first, from 1163 until around 1250, saw the construction of the choir, the nave and two towers. It would take another century for the north facade, transepts, rose window and chapels. Such was the duration of the project that, in the back streets of the Île de la Cité, a new expression sprang up: “To wait 107 years.”
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