“…a vast symphony in stone, so to speak; the colossal work of one man and one people…” — Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831)
In March 2026, we visited the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. I had wanted to see the cathedral since it reopened after the terrible fire of 2019, and we went specifically so I could research my next ARKANE thriller, Crown of Thorns, which centres on the relic kept here.
The weather was wonderful, spring sunshine on pale stone, and in this article, I’ll share some of my photos from the trip so you can virtually join me in this beautiful place.
Notre-Dame stands on the Île de la Cité, the historic heart of Paris, and a bronze star in the square outside marks Point Zéro, the reference point from which road distances from Paris are measured. Entry is free, but it is very busy. You can book a free timed slot on the cathedral’s official website close to the time of your visit and skip the worst of the queuing.
The first stone was laid in 1163 under Bishop Maurice de Sully, and until the mid-13th century this was one of the largest religious monuments in the Western world. Its builders’ contemporaries called the new style “Opus Francigenum,” French work. The word “Gothic” came later, coined in Renaissance Italy as an insult for a style its critics considered as barbaric as the Goths.
The west front went up between 1200 and 1250. Above the portals runs the Gallery of Kings, twenty-eight statues of the kings of Judah, the generations before Christ. In 1793, revolutionaries mistook them for kings of France and beheaded them one by one. The cathedral itself was pillaged, turned into a Temple of Reason, and for a time “served as a wine warehouse,” as its own history admits.
