Notre-Dame de Paris

What it is

Notre-Dame is the cathedral of Paris and it burned down five years before it reopened. The cornerstone was laid in 1163, the high altar was consecrated on 19 May 1182, the building was largely finished by 1260 and work continued until 1345.

It is 128 m long and 48 m wide, built in limestone and marble, and it is the reference building for French Gothic. Napoleon was crowned here on 2 December 1804. UNESCO listed it in 1991.

The fire started at 18:18 on 15 April 2019 and by 19:50 the wooden roof, the flèche and 750 tonnes of stone and lead had come down. The cathedral reopened on 7–8 December 2024 after a restoration costing €739 million.

Checked 2026-08-23 · Source

What's inside

Three rose windows, an organ of more than eight thousand pipes, and the relics.

The Crown of Thorns, a nail from the True Cross and a sliver of the Cross are the cathedral's relics; the Crown was returned on 13 December 2024. The great organ, built by François Thierry in the eighteenth century, was water-damaged in the fire and saved.

Eight bells hang in the north tower; four nineteenth-century bells were recast in 2013.

The medieval glass is mostly gone — it was replaced with white panes in 1756 apart from the rosettes, and some abstract modern glass was added after 1944. The stone that came through the fire was cleaned during the restoration and the interior is far brighter than anyone under sixty remembers it.

Checked 2026-08-23 · Source

How long to spend

An hour inside, and longer if the queue is running.

The cathedral took around twelve million visitors a year before the fire and was the most visited monument in Paris. Reopening did not reduce that.

The tower climb is roughly 300 steps and is ticketed and timed separately from the nave. Add an hour for it.

The square in front and the garden behind on the east end are each worth fifteen minutes; the flying buttresses read better from the garden than from anywhere in front.

Checked 2026-08-23 · Source

Season and crowds

Early morning on a weekday, or during a service if you are content to stand at the back.

The queue on the parvis is the whole visit in season. It moves, but it is long from mid-morning until closing.

Notre-Dame is a working cathedral and mass is celebrated daily. Attending is free and quiet and is a different experience from the tourist flow; photography during services is not appropriate.

April to June and September to October are Paris's comfortable months. The interior is cold in winter — it is stone and it is not heated to room temperature.

Checked 2026-08-23 · Source

Tickets

Entry to the cathedral is free. The tower climb and the treasury are separately ticketed.

Free entry does not mean walk-in: since the reopening, timed reservation has been used to manage the volume, and turning up without one means the standby queue. Current rates for the tower and the treasury are not published on the sources this page uses and are not reproduced here.

The cathedral belongs to the French state, which has owned it since 1905, and the Catholic Church holds exclusive use of it.

Checked 2026-08-23 · Source

Getting there

The Île de la Cité, in the 4th arrondissement, in the middle of the Seine.

Cité on Métro line 4 is the closest station and comes up two minutes from the parvis. Saint-Michel–Notre-Dame on line 4 and the RER B and C is across the bridge on the Left Bank and gives the better first view.

The Métro runs 16 lines across 321 stations, with stations 548 m apart on average — a two-stop journey is usually faster walked.

Checked 2026-08-23 · Source

What to watch out for

Reserve a slot. Free entry and no queue are not the same thing.

This is a place of worship and dress and conduct rules apply: shoulders and knees covered, hats off inside, quiet. During mass the nave is for the congregation.

The tower climb is about 300 steps of spiral staircase with no lift, no way to turn back part-way in a crowd, and low headroom.

Photography is permitted in the cathedral but not during services, and flash is not.

The parvis and the bridges around the island are one of the densest pickpocket environments in Paris because everyone standing there is looking up.

Checked 2026-08-23 · Source

Photography

The front is the postcard and the back is the building. From the Square Jean XXIII behind the east end, the flying buttresses and the rebuilt flèche read as structure rather than as a façade.

From the parvis, the west front faces roughly west, so late afternoon lights it and the morning leaves it flat.

Inside, the three rose windows are the subject and they need the exposure set for the glass rather than for the nave. Flash does nothing at that distance and is prohibited.

The bridges upstream — Pont de l'Archevêché and Pont de la Tournelle — give the whole island with the cathedral on it, which is the photograph the parvis cannot take.

Checked 2026-08-23

Where it is

• 1 hour

  1 min walk · Paris 4e Arrondissement

  square Jean-XXIII

  • High
  • Nature site
• 1 hour

  2 min walk · Paris 4e Arrondissement

  Aux Tours de Notre-Dame

  • Notable
  • Restaurant or café
• 45 min

  2 min walk · Paris 4e Arrondissement

  Point zéro des routes de France

  • Must see
  • Historic monument

External links

• Official site
• +33 1 42 34 56 10
• View on Wikidata