Notre-Dame draws in estimated 13 million visitors each year, but what's the history behind Paris' famous landmark?
The building was badly damaged during the French Revolution in the 1790s, when mobs and revolutionaries looted the interior.Historian Robert Tombs told the BBC that during the Paris Commune revolution in 1871 some"radical anti-clericals" tried to set the building on fire but were stopped by local people.
"As there would have been no effective firefighting had the building caught fire, we might expect it to have been damaged even worse than now," he said.Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame cemented the cathedral's place in popular culture. The book, which has since been turned into a Disney film, highlighted the poor condition the cathedral was in. This helped to prompt major restoration works in the mid-19th Century.
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