Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris

I had known Notre-Dame as an image for years before I finally entered it as a place.

It existed first in books, films, photographs and postcards. Later, it became the image of the fire: the smoke rising above Paris, the roof collapsing and the spire disappearing into the flames. Like so many people, I watched from a distance as something that had seemed permanent suddenly became fragile.

When Ana and I visited Paris in September 2025, the cathedral had only recently returned to the life of the city. We arrived on a Sunday evening, close to the end of the day. The square was still busy, but the light was beginning to fade, softening the stone and the movement around us.

The Church did not exist yet. I was not travelling with the intention of building an archive, documenting every detail or turning the visit into a chapter. I was simply there with my niece, sharing a journey and finally entering a place that had lived in my imagination for years.

Inside, Notre-Dame felt brighter than I expected. The restored stone reflected the light with an almost unfamiliar clarity. Yet the scale of the nave, the columns, the stained glass and the silence between people carried the weight of everything that had happened there before us.

What moved me was not only that the cathedral had survived. It was that it had been returned to use. People were praying, walking, looking upwards, sitting quietly and taking photographs. The building was no longer only a symbol of loss or restoration. It was a living place again.

I remember looking around and trying to reconcile all the versions of Notre-Dame I already knew: the monument from history, the cathedral from photographs, the wounded building from the news and the luminous space standing before me.

Perhaps that is why the visit stayed with me.

Notre-Dame reminded me that restoration is not the same as returning something to exactly what it was. Sometimes restoration means allowing the past to remain visible while making room for life to continue.

Later, when I began The Church, I returned to these photographs and understood that the archive had begun before I knew its name. Some visits only reveal their importance after time has passed.

The memory I carry is not of a ruin or a monument frozen in history. It is of entering Notre-Dame with Ana on a Sunday evening and seeing a place that had been wounded, rebuilt and opened once more to the world.