NOTRE-DAME CATHEDRAL, FROM ETERNITY TO REPRESSION TO ERASURE

THE GIANT 1850'S PARVIS ERASED THE MEDIEVAL NEIGHBORHOOD AND DILUTES THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE*

*As pointed out in Notre-Dame of Paris by Allan Temko, 1957.

Located between Saint-Michel and City Hall — so at the heart of the military complex — the void of almost two acres was among the first of the transformations. Planting foliage around its edges improves it appearance... and camouflages a space built for massing troops.  

 Zoom

City Hall plan for renovation in 2026

In October 2025, these stairs partially hid the void.

For another erasure of a past too tumultuous to be acknowledged, please click here, and for suppressing the past itself, here.

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When houses crowded up to the cathedral's facade... 

Grez computer image

The space was used for a market, for religious performances and for the condemned to ask pardon before execution. But it was small.

Blown up engraving at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital

Enlarged in the 18th century, it remained tiny in comparison with its extent today.

Then the church surged up over daily life to recall eternity, the impression its builders intended:

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The huge esplanade of 1853 led to seeing the giant edifice from afar. It then seemed smaller and less imposing, and the reminder of eternity vanished:

The official explanation: Eliminate a slum, source of crime and epidemics, and make residents move to a healthier periphery. 

• Granted, the slum was so notorious that the first novel about Parisian crime starts with a murder there. 

 Les Mystères de Paris ("The Mysteries of Paris") by Eugène Sue,1843, cover by Jules Chéret, 1895 / zoom

In the background, the towers of Notre-Dame

• But poverty was everywhere, except in the wealthy west and since the cholera epidemic of 1832 began in another neighborhood and the death rate in this one was not the highest, the area was probably not worse than others. 

The real reasons:

• Remove the radicalized underclass population.

• Create space for the army to repress Latin Quarter students should they rise again:

Barricade sur la rue Soufflot, 25 juin 1848 by Horace Vernet, toward 1850 / zoom

In the background is the Panthéon,

symbol of the turbulent Latin Quarter,

and with the esplanade's transformation

open to bombardment.

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Next,
Planning Latin Quarter bombardment has happy results