
Notre-Dame Cathedral of Paris
Gothic cathedral rebuilt by two thousand craftspeople after the devastating fire of two thousand nineteen.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris follows carpenter Patrick Jouenne, who watched the spire collapse on television on April 15, 2019, quit his job the next morning, and was soon leading forty craftsmen rebuilding it with medieval techniques. It reaches back to 1163, when Bishop Maurice de Sully began construction, and to the ninety minutes in 2019 when the fire took the spire before stone vaulting saved the ancient rose windows beneath. Listen for how more than a thousand artisans, and a thousand felled oak trees, answered the call.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Sainte-Chapelle
Gothic royal chapel whose walls of soaring stained glass were built to house the Crown of Thorns.
Basilique Cathédrale Saint-Denis
First Gothic church and royal necropolis where French kings lay buried for over a thousand years.
Sainte-Chapelle de Vincennes
Single-nave royal chapel of Flamboyant Gothic stone, its rose window crowning a fortress sanctuary.
Église Saint-Eustache
Gothic-Renaissance church where Molière was baptised, housing France's largest organ and a Keith Haring bronze.
La Madeleine
Neoclassical temple built for Napoleon's army that became a church after a seventy-eight-year identity crisis.
Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre
Romano-Byzantine basilica crowning Montmartre, built as political atonement over France's most revolutionary hill.