On April 15, 2019, the world watched as Notre-Dame de Paris withstood a devastating fire. But the great Gothic cathedral itself has watched over its city for nearly a thousand years. From the beginning of its construction in 1163 to the Hundred Years War when an English king was crowned there to the French Revolution when its statues of kings were beheaded to Napoleon’s coronation to witnessing the adversities of World War II, Notre-Dame has stood at the heart of Paris.
With its reopening scheduled for December, Barbara Drake Boehm, Paul and Jill Ruddock Curator Emerita of the Met Cloisters, traces the history of this monument through times of turbulence and triumph.
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