NOTRE-DAME CATHEDRAL: ETERNITY, REPRESSION, ERASURE

THE GIANT PARVIS OF1853 DILUTES THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE,* THEN IS CAMOUFLAGED ITSELF

*As pointed out in Allan Temko's classic study, Notre-Dame of Paris, 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. 

        Claude Abron

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 too tumultuous to be acknowledged please click here, and for suppressing the past itself, here.

# # #

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

                              Engraving by Gustave Doré for Gargantua, by the 16th-century writer Rabelais / zoom

Gargantua takes refuge on towers of Notre-Dame. 

    Blown up engraving at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital

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

...the church surged up over daily life to recall eternity, an impression that the esplanade destroyed:

   

The official explanation: Eliminate a slum, source of crime and epidemics

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

    Les Mystères de 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, which the esplanade's transformation opened to bombardment.

Christmas card

That past is obliterated now

*      *      * 

Next,
Planning Latin Quarter bombardment has happy results