Why in News:

• Dozens of public housing advocates protested outside the gutted Notre Dame in Paris on Monday to demand that France’s poorest be remembered after donors pledged $1 billion to rebuild the cathedral and its destroyed roof.

Details:

• Notre-Dame de Paris, also called Notre-Dam Cathedral, cathedral church in Paris.
• It is the most famous of the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages and is distinguished for its size, antiquity, and architectural interest.
• The cathedral was initiated by Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris, who about 1160 conceived the
• idea of converting into a single building, on a larger scale, the ruins of the two earlier basilicas.
• The foundation stone was laid by Pope Alexander III in 1163, and the high altar   was consecrated in 1189.
• After the French Revolution it was rescued from possible destruction by Napoleon, who crowned himself emperor of the French in the cathedral in 1804. Notre-Dame underwent major restorations by the French architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc in the mid-19th century.
• The popularity of Victor Hugo’s historical novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), wherein the cathedral is the setting, was said to have inspired the renovations.
• During a restoration campaign in 2019, a fire broke out in the cathedral’s attic, and the massive blaze destroyed most of the roof, Viollet-le-Duc’s 19th-century spire, and some of the rib vaulting. Notre-Dame de Paris meaning “Our Lady of Paris” often referred to simply as Notre-Dame,
• It is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. The cathedral is consecrated to the Virgin Mary and considered to be one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture.
• Its innovative use of the rib vault and flying buttress, its enormous and colourful rose windows, and the naturalism and abundance of its sculptural decoration set it apart from the earlier Romanesque style.