Notre-Dame de Paris
The first thing you notice, stepping inside Notre-Dame in 2025, is the smell — clean stone and new timber, the particular quiet of a space that has been remade from near ruin. The cathedral reopened on 7 December 2024, more than five years after the April 2019 fire consumed its 13th-century oak framework and brought the spire down through the vaulting. What stands now is both the old building and its own resurrection.
At 128 metres long and with towers rising 69 metres above the Île de la Cité, Notre-Dame is not subtle. The three rose windows — still considered benchmarks of medieval stained glass — pull light differently at every hour. Entry to the cathedral is free; the towers cost €10 and require a ticket.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who return tend to arrive early on a weekday, before the guided groups settle in, and spend time simply looking up at the nave vaulting rather than moving toward the altar. The north tower bells — Gabriel, Denis, Marcel and the rest — ring on the hour. If you're there for it, you'll understand why Maurice de Sully wanted the building so tall.
Deals in Notre-Dame de Paris
Book directly at the providerHow Notre-Dame de Paris came to be
In 1160, Maurice de Sully — newly appointed Bishop of Paris — decided the existing church was insufficient for the city's ambitions. Construction began between March and April 1163, with King Louis VII and Pope Alexander III present for the laying of the cornerstone. The choir was complete by 1182; the two towers followed by around 1250. The name of the first master builder is lost, but an inscription in the south transept records Jean de Chelles, who died in 1258. Pierre de Montreuil and Pierre de Chelles continued the work. Sully himself died in 1196, a century before the cathedral reached its final form in 1345.
The Revolution stripped much of its statuary. The 19th-century restoration, led by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus from 1844, gave the building its iconic spire — an oak-and-lead reconstruction of the 13th-century original. That spire collapsed in the 2019 fire. Architect Philippe Villeneuve has overseen the reconstruction, and the building reopened in December 2024 with restoration work still continuing around it.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.