Philippe Villeneuve

Napoleon was crowned emperor there in 1804, but the building was in very bad shape.

Then the cathedral was considered for demolition.

This is when Victor Hugo published his novel Notre-Dame de Paris,

It put the cathedral at the heart of France.

It put its architecture at the heart of its culture.

So it was decided that the building would be restored.

The architect Viollet-le-Duc, my father, won the competition to restore the Notre-Dame.

He turned it into the building we know today.

His oeuvre totale, full-scale work, was to create the ideal cathedral imagined by the 19th century.

Notre Dame continued its course.

It came out intact of World War I and World War II.

It had funerals for presidents and national tributes.

There was a ceremony after the deadly terrorist attacks of 2015.

Then came the fateful day, April 15, 2019.

The following day, I entered the cathedral in ruins.

The light was harsh.

The stone was a dark brown.

Water was streaming down from the vaults.

The floor was covered with burned wood.

The chairs were scattered by the collapsing vaults.