Nôtre-Dame, the great Gothic cathedral of Paris,…

Nôtre-Dame, the great Gothic cathedral of Paris, is at once a setting and a protagonist in Victor Hugo's Nôtre-Dame de Paris.

Hugo had intended his book to awaken a concern for the surviving Gothic architecture, however, rather than to initiate a craze for neo-Gothic in contemporary life.

In the same year this hugely popular work of fiction appears, the new French monarchy establishes a post of Inspector-General of Ancient Monuments, a post that will be filled in 1833 by Prosper Merimée.