Description

Hundreds of French churches and cathedrals were destroyed or converted to warehouses or horse barns during the French Revolution. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that the French government committed to recover and restore that church heritage, inspired in part by the public success of Victor Hugo’s novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Viollet-le-Duc examined the historical remains of famous churches, reconstructed the churches, and wrote treatises explaining his sometimes-controversial work.