Unlike most places in Paris where advance tickets are recommended, Notre Dame tickets are not available until 48 hours or so before day you want to go. (I say "or so" because until recently it was 24 hours).
Even though it was a modest hassle in this case for us, I like the policy compared to "tickets sell out three months in advance" because for people who aren't planning a trip to Paris months in advance, it can be hard, or impossible even, to get tickets.
So, it was one of the three events I asked the concierge at our hotel to arrange for us, along with two restaurant reservations where it was impossible to book through a website. The concierge got us the tickets (Notre Dame's a church, so tickets are free).
There's still a way to enter without advance tickets, but the line gets long. If you don't have tickets, just go early in the day -- when we showed up for our reasonable 9:15 entry, the line for visitors without tickets was relatively short and moved quickly. When we returned another late afternoon to get photos of the facade in the sunlight, the ticketless line was quite long.
Anyhow, we traipsed in. Having seen pictures of the inside of the post-fire rebuild, we were still wowed by just how clean it is. Notre Dame is not the most architectural beautiful cathedral, but it certainly has its fair share of amazing elements.
Construction began in 1163 and largely completed by 1260 -- less than one hundred years to build, or about the amount of time it takes the U.S. government to build one electric vehicle charging station. It's built in the French Gothic style, and located on the Ile de la Cite, an island in the River Seine right in the heart of the city.
The fire occurred on April 15, 2019, destroying most of the roof and the fleche. (The fleche, as we all know without having to look it up, are spires in Gothic architecture).
Among the wow factor for Notre Dame -- the facade, the flying buttresses, the rib vault, the stunning stained glass rose windows, its huge church bells, and, of course, its history, both in Paris and as a former American college football powerhouse.
The cathedral suffered the desecration of much of its religious imagery during the various French revolutions, hosted the coronation of Napoleon, and was restored after the publication of Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" sparked public interest in saving the cathedral.
The cathedral was semi-crowded. There were plenty of gawkers like us, but we also felt we had plenty of space to take in the Cathedral.
We wandered around the church and back out through the grand doors of Notre Dame. The doors apparently date back to the 13th century, and were not impacted by the fire of 2019. A young blacksmith was hired to create the decorative ironwork on the doors.
His work was so detailed and artistic that Parisians were amazed by the intricacy of the doors. Some claimed it had to be the work of the devil, especially since the doors were stuck shut until sprinkled with holy water. The blacksmith died shortly after the work was completed, and some people thought his death was payment owed to the devil.
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