Notre Dame - what to watch or read?

Hi fred!

Are there specific topics and themes about Notre Dame that you're particularly interested in learning more about? How "technical" do want to go? (More generalized? Or more in-depth, scientific? etc).

I could give you hundreds of recommendations for things to read and watch about Notre Dame. But that would be a bit...much! Haha. If you're able to narrow the criteria of what you're looking for, I'd be happy to provide you with some recommendations.

P.s. Yes! I definitely agree that you should read The Hunchback of Notre Dame (or, Notre Dame de Paris, as it's originally titled!).

P.p.s. Although, like you already said, the Netflix series is a very dramatic story. However, it's very inaccurate from a factual and historical viewpoint. I'm not saying that you shouldn't watch it or that you shouldn't enjoy it! I just wanted to give you the FYI, in case you're looking for something historically accurate.

Bonjour Emily,

I was hoping you’d reply. Not so sure I know how to respond. The short answer, I think, is writings or programs or films that would give us as lay visitors a better basis in advance to appreciate and understand what we will see at Notre Dame and why the cathedral means so much to the French people - whether they are religious or not. Not journal articles. Not treatises.

The Nova show is excellent on the original construction and techniques, the fortuitously timed and detailed digital analysis 15 or so years ago and the reconstruction as of about 3 years ago.

What might I learn about or better appreciate when we visit in September? The place Notre Dame has in the hearts of the French? The Rose window? The art and artifacts - both what has survived the fire and what may have been lost? Altar pieces, chapels of note, the sculptural work on the front facade? (I do remember St Denis with his head in his hands from our 2010 visit.). What changes Violette Le Duc made in the 19th Century apart from adding himself among Notre Dame’s guardians?

I’m no historian, nor Catholic nor even Christian. My wife and I enjoyed reading The Agony and the Ecstacy by Irving Stone before we first went to Italy 20+ years ago and Robert Harris’ Pompeii before we went to southern Italy last year. Both gave us a preview of the history and times and people who shaped the world we saw through their art and architecture. I also read The Aeneid to get more of a sense of who shaped the parts of southern Italy that we visited in Sicily and Puglia and the Cilento - Magna Graecia.

Two years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed a biographies of Ailenor of Aquitaine and Catherine de Medici before we went to Bordeaux, the Dordogne and the Loire Valley.

Anyway, this should give you some thoughts about what to suggest for any of us who what to better appreciate what we will see at Notre Dame.

(As for the Netflix show, it is one of a number of TV shows or movies I can watch with French subtitles to try to restore my less than adequate French so I have une petite chance pour comprendre Les Francais qui ne parle pas Anglais. And as I said, the special effects were awesome.)

I aways liked the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The 1939 film. Seems to give a flavor to the Cathedral.