EGLISE (church) NOTRE DAME DE PARIS

Notre-Dame de Paris
                                                   (IPA: [nɔtʁə dam də paʁi]; French for "Our Lady of Paris"), also known as Notre-Dame Cathedral or simply Notre-Dame, is an historic Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France.^[2] The cathedral is widely considered to be one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture and among the largest and most well-known church buildings in the world. The naturalism of its sculptures and stained glass are in contrast with earlier Romanesque architecture.

As the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Paris, Notre-Dame is the parish that contains the cathedra, or official chair, of the archbishop of Paris, currently Archbishop André Vingt-Trois.^[3] The cathedral treasury is notable for its reliquary which houses some of Catholicism's most important first-class relics including the purported Crown of Thorns, a fragment of the True Cross, and one of the Holy Nails.

In the 1790s, Notre-Dame suffered desecration during the radical phase of the French Revolution when much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. An extensive restoration supervised by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc began in 1845. A project of further restoration and maintenance began in 1991.