Notre-Dame's gargoyles and chimeras: how old?

First things first: a gargoyle isn't a chimera

Most people call any stone monster on a cathedral a gargoyle. At Notre-Dame, though, there are two quite different families, and it's worth telling them apart.

A gargoyle has a job: it's a drain. A stone channel that collects rainwater from the roof and throws it clear of the wall, so the water doesn't damage the stone. That's why it juts out horizontally and usually has its mouth open: that's where the water comes out.

A chimera has no job at all. It doesn't drain anything and it doesn't hold anything up. It sits on its corner, high above the city, so that you'll look at it. Pure, rather theatrical decoration.

Gargoyles really are medieval, although they were late arrivals here. When the choir was finished, around 1190, Notre-Dame had neither gutters nor gargoyles, and as late as about 1210 the rain was still dripping off the edge of the cornices. The first gargoyles appeared around 1220 at Laon Cathedral, already shaped like fantastic animals. They reached Notre-Dame with cornices rebuilt a few years later, and became widespread in Paris around 1240.

Two caveats. Many of the gargoyles you see today were also remade in the 19th century. And the man who gives us that medieval timeline is one of the two who designed the chimeras: the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, in his great dictionary of architecture.

A novel, a note and a building site

To see where the chimeras come from, go back to 1831. That year Victor Hugo published Notre-Dame de Paris, the novel that gave the world Quasimodo. In the preface he said that, while poking around the cathedral, he'd found a Greek word carved by hand in a dark corner of one of the towers: ANANKÉ, "fate". It had since been scraped off or whitewashed (he couldn't remember which), and the book, he said, grew out of that word. Lovely scene. But Hugo's the only one who tells it.

What is down in black and white is the note he added in 1832 to the definitive edition. In it he said that one of the main aims of the novel was to inspire the nation with a love of its national architecture, and boiled it down to four words: "Conservons les monuments anciens" – let's preserve the old monuments.

In 1844 the great restoration of the cathedral began, led by two architects, Lassus and Viollet-le-Duc. So did the novel save Notre-Dame? It's very tempting to say so. The honest version is more modest: Hugo called for old monuments to be preserved, and some years later Notre-Dame was restored. That the book was the cause, let alone the only one, is an interpretation, not a proven fact.

And a word for the fans: Quasimodo never existed. The novel ends with two skeletons locked in an embrace in the charnel vault at Montfaucon, which crumble to dust when someone tries to separate them. If you've ever pictured him peering out between the chimeras, there's an extra snag: when Hugo wrote the book, the chimeras weren't there yet.

Fifty-four monsters, made to order

There are 54 chimeras, perched on the angles of the balustrade that runs round the towers, and no two are alike. The architects did the preparatory drawings themselves. The sculptor Victor Pyanet carved them, each one cut from one block. Among the records of the works, his commitment is worded with admirable practicality: he'd make all the "gros animaux qui sont aux angles" – the big beasts on the corners. The last were put in place in 1856.

Why so many monsters if they did nothing? Viollet-le-Duc explained it in his own way: cut out against the sky, these figures bring the great masses of stone to life. They're a Middle Ages imagined by the 19th century, and carved with real stonemason's craft.

The Stryge: a star made by an etching

Of the 54, one has a fame all its own: the one with the pensive pose. People call it the Stryge, after a she-demon of ancient myth. No mason gave it that name. It came from the etcher Charles Meryon, in a print made around 1853. A photograph by Charles Nègre from the same years did a great deal for its celebrity, and that pose inspired Romantic artists straight away.

So the chimera many people take for "the medieval monster of Notre-Dame" owes its name and its fame to two 19th-century artists. It's roughly the same age as its own legend.

Fact or legend?

Legend: Notre-Dame's chimeras are medieval. Fact: they were designed by the architects of the restoration that began in 1844, carved by Victor Pyanet, and the last went up in 1856.

Fact, with a caveat: gargoyles were born in the Middle Ages, as drains, but many of today's are 19th-century. Which ones are original, we can't say from what we've read.

Only Hugo says so: the word ANANKÉ carved in a tower.

Interpretation: that the novel saved the cathedral. Hugo called for preservation and the restoration came later; cause and effect aren't proven.

Fiction: Quasimodo.

The saint with the architect's face

The 19th-century restoration left another signature, better hidden. Notre-Dame's medieval spire had been taken down at the end of the 18th century, and Viollet-le-Duc built a new one, inaugurated in 1859. Around its base he placed sixteen statues, each about three metres tall, among them the apostles. One of them, St Thomas, patron saint of architects, doesn't look out over the city: he turns back towards the spire. The sculptor, Geoffroy-Dechaume, gave him Viollet-le-Duc's features. The architect had slipped himself into his own work.

That spire came down on the evening of 15 April 2019, in the fire. The statues had been removed a few days earlier for building work, and they survived. St Thomas was the last of the sixteen to go back, in 2025, to the base of the rebuilt spire.

So a good deal of the Notre-Dame that seems timeless is really a conversation between centuries: 13th-century masons, 19th-century architects and 21st-century restorers.

How to tell them apart from the square

From the open square in front of the cathedral, look for the stone balustrade that runs round the towers: the chimeras sit on its angles, small from down here. The gargoyles, on the other hand, jut out from the walls and buttresses, stretching into thin air. Rule of thumb: mouth open and pointing outwards, gargoyle; sitting still and watching, chimera.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story at the first stop of Notre-Dame and the Île Saint-Louis, in front of the façade. The same route goes on to the word Hugo claimed to have found, and to the spire and the cockerel that survived the fire.

If it's your first walk in Paris, start with The Île de la Cité: from the Pont Neuf to Notre-Dame, our free route: eleven stops from the tip of the island to the square in front of the cathedral, right below these same chimeras, following the last day of the last Templar grand master.

Notre-Dame's chimeras aren't medieval (and they aren't gargoyles either)

First things first: a gargoyle isn't a chimera

A novel, a note and a building site

Fifty-four monsters, made to order

The Stryge: a star made by an etching

The saint with the architect's face

How to tell them apart from the square

Where to hear it

Further reading

Where to hear this story

The Île de la Cité: from the Pont Neuf to Notre-Dame

Notre-Dame and the Île Saint-Louis

Plan your time in Paris

Your first city,
on Podtour.

Your first city,
on Podtour.

First things first: a gargoyle isn't a chimera

A novel, a note and a building site

Fifty-four monsters, made to order

The Stryge: a star made by an etching

The saint with the architect's face

How to tell them apart from the square

Where to hear it

Further reading

Where to hear this story

The Île de la Cité: from the Pont Neuf to Notre-Dame

Notre-Dame and the Île Saint-Louis

Plan your time in Paris

Your first city,on Podtour.

Your first city,on Podtour.

Your first city,
on Podtour.

Your first city,
on Podtour.