A Masterwork of French Gothic

Notre-Dame was among the first great buildings to use the flying buttress, the external prop that carried the thrust of the high vaults outward and let the walls open into vast windows. Built over nearly two centuries, it fuses early and high Gothic and gave Paris a cathedral to match the growing prestige of the Capetian monarchy whose island city it crowned. It has been the stage of coronations, royal weddings, state funerals and the self-coronation of Napoleon in 1804, and its nineteenth-century restoration by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, prompted in part by Victor Hugo's novel, gave it the spire that fell in 2019.

As the cathedral of the Archbishop of Paris it remains an active place of worship as well as the most visited monument in the city. It stands within the UNESCO World Heritage property "Paris, Banks of the Seine," inscribed in 1991, which recognises the architectural ensemble strung along the river through the heart of the capital.