Jeremy Melvin is an architecture history expert, journalist and published author. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.
It is poignant that the great cathedral of Notre Dame is probably receiving as much attention now, as its fate hangs in the balance, than at any other time in its 850-year history. Rarely has the destruction of an historic work of architecture generated so much public emotion.
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Last year, the inferno at Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro destroyed many cultural artifacts and rattled the country’s sense of its own history, but international interest in the disaster quickly dwindled. Perhaps the closest comparison to Monday’s fire is the burning of Britain’s Houses of Parliament in 1834, which simultaneously destroyed a national symbol and some of the finest examples of English medieval art.
But the loss to architecture that the destruction — even if only partial — of Notre Dame represents is arguably more tragic.
Built on the ruins of earlier churches, the project was initiated under Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris, in 1160. Construction went on for many decades but the bulk of the work was completed between 1163 and 1250.
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