Passage II

Notre Dame Cathedral: Saved By a Book

Every year, thirteen million people visit Notre Dame de Paris on an annual basis. They wait in long lines to view the brilliant stained glass of the famed rose windows, to gaze at the horned and gaping gargoyles, and to feel small beneath the vaulted ceilings and flying buttresses of the cathedral considered by many to be the premier example of French Gothic architecture in the world.

There would likely be no cathedral to visit, for instance, if not for Victor Hugo's epic novel Notre-Dame de Paris, commonly known as The Hunch back of Notre-Dame. In the late 1700s, during the French Revolution, much of the architectural icon was destroyed. What builders and craftsmen, starting in 1163, had then taken more then one hundred fifty years to create were tumbling into ruins in politically tumultuous times. The population of a city engulfed in chaos chose Notre Dame as one of its targets, defacing statues, breaking windows, and smashing furniture in an attempt to remove any vestiges of royalty and of its religion.

Years later, in 1831, Victor Hugo published his novel, the masterpiece offers a sweeping and brutal look at issues of class and power in France. The first novel to have beggars as protagonists, the book also features the cathedral itself as a central character. So popular was the story that one of its effects was to spur the restoration of the cathedral, and Hugo had portrayed as teetering on the brink of utter deterioration. In addition to being exalted as a monumental work of architecture, the cathedral emerging in Hugo's pages as embodying history-history worth preserving with a vengeance. The actual work of restoration was helped by Gothic Revival architect his name is Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. The popular sentiment that set the stage for the restoration was fueled by a novel, that like the monument it celebrated, eventually gained international cheers.