Undertaken in the 1840s, Notre-Dame de Paris’s restoration marked a turning point in the story of the great 19th-century movement focusing on the rehabilitation of cathedrals. A few years after the publication of Victor Hugo’s novel (1831), which enjoyed enormous popular success, the interest it aroused bore witness to the monument’s symbolic importance and its role in the nation. As a result, architects’ restorations contributed to construction of a national identity based on an often reinvented Middle Ages.

Curatorship Fabienne Chevallier, Manager of the Inventory Office; Clémence Raynaud, Chief Curator, Architecture.