Victor Hugo’s enormously successful Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) had been quickly translated into other languages across Europe.

One of the effects of the novel has been to shame the City of Paris to undertake a restoration of the much-neglected Cathedral of Notre Dame, which is attracting thousands of tourists who had read the popular novel.

The book also has inspired a renewed appreciation for pre-renaissance buildings, which hereafter begins to be actively preserved.

A restoration program is initiated on Notre Dame in 1845, overseen by architects Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus (1807-1857) and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

The restoration is to last twenty-five years and will include the construction of a flèche (a type of spire) as well as the addition of the chimeras on the Galerie des Chimères.