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# Viollet-le-Duc's definition of restoration and the rebuilding of Notre-Dame
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/ezhen-violle-le-diuk-okazavshiisia-pered-neprostym-vyborom-na-kakuiu-iz-istoricheskikh-iteratsii-notr-dama-orientirovatsia-restavriruia-ego-pisal-chto-v-takikh-obstoiatelstvakh-luchsheg/
- Published: 2023-10-28T14:32:22.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:34:46.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Architecture, Observations, Heritage, Paris

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, faced with the difficult choice of which of Notre-Dame's historical iterations to follow in restoring it, wrote that in such circumstances it is best of all to try to imagine oneself in the place of…

Yet I suspect that he imagined not only the architects of the thirteenth century, transported through time: in Viollet-le-Duc's dictionary of French architecture there is a remark that "to restore a building is not to maintain it, repair it or rebuild it; it is to reinstate it in a condition of completeness which may never have existed at any given time."

I hope, however, that the new old Notre-Dame will be returned precisely to the state of completeness that Viollet-le-Duc proposed.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_10184@28-10-2023_17-32-22.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_10185@28-10-2023_17-32-22.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_10186@28-10-2023_17-32-22.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_10187@28-10-2023_17-32-22.jpg)