Notre-Dame cathedral - RTÉ Brainstorm article

After nearly five years of renovation and reconstruction, Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris will open to the public on 8 December 2024. I have just written a short article for RTÉ Brainstorm on the history of the building and an Irish connection to Notre-Dame. Read it here.

 

 Notre-Dame cathedral under renovation (March 2024)

 

Notre-Dame was built on the site of another cathedral and historians believe that there was a Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter there before that. The current cathedral dates from 1163 and it has been the site of construction, renovation and reconstruction many times during its lifetime. On this occasion, over €700 million was spent to reconstruct the roof and spire which were damaged in the fire that broke out in April 2019. 

 

Page from Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris [Hunchback of Notre Dame]. Image source.

Listed on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites as Paris, Banks of the Seine since 1991, Notre-Dame is an icon of French Gothic architecture. To learn about the history of the cathedral, there's a good 12 point history here and on the Europeana website. 

Notre-Dame's official website also has a good history of the cathedral here. On the Gallica website here you can discover about the history of the cathedral by searching through archival material. The 2019 fire burned for 15 hours and temperatures reached around 1,200°F. If you would like to read more about the fire and the work that was done in the years since then, there is a good article here from Archaeology Magazine and here from the Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris website.

 

Fr Lacordaire giving a funeral oration for Daniel O'Connell in Notre-Dame in 1848. Image source.

I came across the reference to Daniel O'Connell and the funeral oration in Notre-Dame by Fr Lacordaire in a couple of places. The first time I saw it was in the edited volume on Franco-Irish history Paris - Capital of Irish Culture. There are references to O'Connell in chapters by Kevin Whelan and Laurent Colantonio.