Notre-Dame Facade

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This is the western facade of the Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Paris. This is the front of the cathedral.

This photograph was taken only about four months after the scaffolding was removed from the front of the cathedral, at the conclusion of several years of extremely meticulous and careful cleaning of the facade. This cleaning used a variety of methods, and literally involved cleaning the stone of the cathedral millimetre by millimetre, with tiny brushes, special laser treatments, and special cleaning packs. The result is breathtaking, as you can see. This is how the cathedral appeared when it was brand new—almost a thousand years ago.

This picture was taken in the late afternoon on a very nice spring day in April. The stone of the cathedral is a pleasant cream-beige color in real life, which you may or may not see in this photo, depending on your monitor.

Note the large rose window in the center of the facade. It is one of the few original stained-glass windows in the building. Also, the lack of perfect symmetry in the facade is deliberate; that was the fashion in those days.

You can climb up to the bases and summits of the bell towers, for a small fee (you can see the guard railings in the photo, barely). The large, dark metal louvers in the towers direct the sound of the bells (which are still rung regularly) down towards the surrounding streets.

In the parvis (plaza) in front of the cathedral, markers in the stones of the pavement show the outlines of the buildings that stood directly in front of the cathedral when it was originally built (you can see some of these at the bottom of the photo, barely). Beneath this plaza is a crypt and archaeological exhibit that you can visit, showing the layout of the city contemporary with the construction of Notre-Dame, as well as the remains of the church that preceded Notre-Dame (yes, there was another one that was built even earlier).

Directly in front of the cathedral, mounted in the pavement (and not visible here), is a small disk that marks “kilomètre zéro,” the reference point from which all distances in France are measured.

Note: If you are studying the facade of the cathedral for academic purposes (school reports and the like), I have a much larger version of this photo in black and white that shows a lot of detail on the facade. Click here for details.

Photographed on April 6, 2002.