![]() ![]() ![]() The hundreds of people inside for evening mass were ushered out safely. It was that spire which caught fire and crashed down before the cameras of the world in the evening of April 15. Viollet-le-Duc had a copy made and placed on the roof. The original medieval spire had been removed as unsafe before the revolution. The French government agreed to a massive restoration plan under the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Revolutionary leaders had transformed it into a "Temple of Reason," and much of its religious statuary had been smashed. He called it a "vast symphony in stone" as "powerful and fecund as the divine creation."Ĭonstruction on the "symphonic" building began in 1163, but the cathedral fell into deep disrepair after the French Revolution of 1789. One of Hugo's goals in writing the book was to rekindle interest in the cathedral so it could be restored. No, not a description of the fire which ravaged Notre-Dame in April 2019, but a fictional fire - art foreshadowing life - in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, published by Victor Hugo in 1831. On the crest of the highest gallery, higher than the central rose window, there was a great flame rising between the two towers with whirlwinds of sparks, a vast, disordered and furious flame, a tongue of which was borne into the smoke by the wind. ![]()
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