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Notre Dame Cathedral

Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Paris line art illustration (click image to enlarge)

Artist's notes:

The drawing of Notre Dame Cathedral was completed in 1995, a year before I had planned to spend the summer living there (I had worked from some public domain photos to create drawing.) This could perhaps be my most successful architectural rendering, as I recall spending weeks on the towers (left side of the image) alone. As with some of the other architectural rendering I look at now, I wonder if I would have the patience to create such a detailed illustration.

Information about Notre Dame Cathedral:

Notre Dame de Paris (meaning Our Lady of Paris) is a large cathedral situated on the banks of the Seine River on the eastern part of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement. It is generally considered one of the best example of French gothic architecture in Europe. The groundbreaking is believed to have started in 1163, but the cathedral wasn't completed until 1345. The cathedral has gone through many difficult transitions over the years, including periods of neglect, occasionally even being used for such mundane tasks as housing livestock or for storage. The cathedral also suffered vandalism at the hands of radicals during the French revolution in the 1790s. Today, though, the buildings stands in it's original glory, thanks to an extensive and painstaking restoration supervised by the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. It is one of the most easily recognizable buildings in the world and one of the main tourist attractions in Paris. The profile of the cathedral was raised even higher when Victor Hugo wrote "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", published in 1831.