The Architecture of Notre-Dame Cathedral
Notre-Dame is one of the defining monuments of French Gothic architecture. Begun in 1163, it was among the first great buildings to combine the rib vault, the pointed arch and the flying buttress on a cathedral scale — a structural revolution that let its builders raise the roof and dissolve the walls into glass.
The west front
The facade is a lesson in medieval order. At ground level, three deep sculpted portals — the Portal of the Virgin, the central Portal of the Last Judgment, and the Portal of Saint Anne — frame the entrances. Above them runs the Gallery of Kings, a row of 28 statues of the kings of Judah. Higher still sits the western rose window, roughly ten metres across, with the twin towers rising to either side. Each tower stands about 69 metres tall; the climb up the north tower, reopened in 2025, passes the famous chimera gallery.
Inside: nave, vaults and light
The interior is built for height and light. The nave rises to rib vaults roughly 33 metres above the floor, carried on slender piers that draw the eye upward. Because the flying buttresses take the outward thrust of the vaults, the walls could be opened up for windows — the reason a Gothic interior feels so much brighter and taller than the Romanesque churches that came before it.
The rose windows
Notre-Dame's three rose windows are among the largest and finest in the world. The north rose, dating from around 1250, is the best preserved and still holds a great deal of its original 13th-century glass, glowing in deep blues and reds. The south rose, of similar size at roughly 13 metres across, was a gift associated with King Louis IX. Together with the smaller western rose they flood the transepts with coloured light.
The flying buttresses
The ring of flying buttresses around the choir and nave is not just structure but spectacle. By transferring the thrust of the vaults outward to freestanding piers, they allowed the walls to climb higher and thinner than ever before. The chevet buttresses, with their long reaching arches, are among the earliest and most admired examples anywhere.
The spire (flèche)
The slender spire over the crossing is not medieval. The original was removed in the 18th century, and the familiar flèche — oak clad in lead, about 93 metres to its tip — was designed by Viollet-le-Duc during the 19th-century restoration. It was destroyed in the 2019 fire and has since been rebuilt to the same design, once again crowned by its golden rooster reliquary.
New glass for a new era
The cathedral continues to change. Following the restoration, a set of six contemporary stained-glass windows by the artist Claire Tabouret was commissioned for chapels in the south nave, with installation planned around the end of 2026 — the most significant addition to the interior since the 19th century, and, like many decisions in the building's long life, not without debate.
The medieval roof — “the forest”
Hidden above the stone vaults, out of sight of visitors, lay one of the cathedral's most extraordinary features: the medieval roof frame, a dense lattice of oak beams nicknamed “the forest” because so much timber went into it. Assembled from the 12th and 13th centuries, it was among the oldest surviving roof structures in Paris — and it was this that burned in April 2019. The reconstruction reframed the roof in oak using traditional carpentry, felling new trees and shaping the beams much as medieval carpenters would have, so that the rebuilt cathedral is crowned once more by a timber forest.