La Cathedrale Notre Dame Analysis

La Cathedrale Notre Dame is a church in Paris built during the Gothic period. It was completed in 1335 AD to replace a sixth century basilica. The cathedral spans 427 feet by 157 feet. Notre-Dame Cathedral follows a symmetrical floor plan, with the apse, choir and nave aligned on the line of symmetry. A double ambulatory surrounds the apse and the nave is flanked by double aisles and square chapels. The central spire was added by Violet le Duc during restoration in the 19th century. The cathedral is 110 feet tall from crown to its vaults. Two early Gothic towers were built from 1210-1250 AD each 223 feet high. The west façade also consists of three levels surmounted by a row of twenty eight kings from the Old Testament. While the east façade features large clerestory windows held by single-arch flying buttresses.

Basic cathedral architecture dictates a building of longitudinal space with three or more parallel structures of which the central structure rises above the other two and is lit by windows on both sides on the upper part. As Gothic architecture transitioned from Romanesque architecture, the gathering space unified into a wholesome space

Built on the ruins of two earlier churches, Notre-Dame lies

This in turn led to a widely accepted belief of the cathedral being a universal collective work of art. Hence this leads us to analyze the choreography of ideas embodied through the cathedral. As the Notre-Dame is built in the transitional period from Romanesque to Gothic, the west portals of the Notre-Dame follow traditional Romanesque layout showing the Last Judgment, where good and evil stood apart implying the condition for man to step into a holy space. The theme of divine authority intertwined with royalty is bold in Notre-Dame, where one can see the ancestral line of French kings next to the Old Testament Kings on the gallery above the