When Notre Dame’s spire collapsed in the fire of April 15, 2019, the world watched the loss of a feature that was not even medieval. The site on the Île de la Cité once held a Gallo-Roman temple to Jupiter, and a first century Roman monument was later found beneath the cathedral, followed by an early Christian basilica. In the 12th century, as Paris boomed, Bishop Maurice de Sully decided the old church was not grand enough. The cornerstone was laid in 1163, and construction took more than two centuries, with limestone shipped down the Seine. Laser scans by art historian Andrew Tallon showed the upper walls have not moved in 800 years, proving the flying buttresses were planned from the start, and the 2019 fire revealed it was the first known building to use iron staples structurally.

Later eras were less kind. Renaissance clergy hung tapestries to hide the Gothic interior, and 18th century canons smashed medieval stained glass for clear panes and chiseled off gargoyles. Revolutionaries stripped its metals, rededicated it to the Cult of Reason, stored grain in it, and beheaded 28 statues of biblical kings they mistook for French monarchs. Napoleon had it whitewashed for his coronation. By the 1830s it faced demolition until Victor Hugo’s novel Notre-Dame de Paris turned public opinion, and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc restored it, adding chimeras and a new spire. It reopened in December 2024.

• How flying buttresses carry the outward thrust of the stone vault outside the walls to allow huge windows
• Viollet-le-Duc’s face on the statue of St. Thomas, the only apostle turned to gaze up at his spire
• Why the 2019 fire nearly caused the buttresses to push the whole structure inward
• The rebuild debate over glass roofs and even a rooftop pool, and the choice to recreate the medieval roof frame called the forest
• The new golden rooster holding relics and a list of workers, and a 700 year old lead sarcophagus found under the floor