Welcome Home, Quasimodo! A Tale of Two Notre Dames

* *  *The scene is fiction, of course, like the great French classic itself.  It invites Notre-Dame de Paris’s famous protagonist, the hunchbacked bell-ringer, Quasimodo, to present-day Paris for a visit to Notre-Dame Cathedral, now restored after the devastating fire of  2019. We imagine Quasimodo slipping into the iconic scene with another revenant—and with the same result as in the novel’s climactic scene. But what would Quasimodo think and feel if he could run, climb, and swing through Notre-Dame Cathedral, today? Bewilderment at the transformation—the new gleam of gold and restored paint everywhere, the shiny scaffolding still draped over the ancient stones? Would the hunchbacked bell-ringer, once at home in the cathedral’s shadows, feel a sense of nostalgia—or unease? 

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) wrote Notre-Dame de Paris in 1831 at a time when the Gothic architectural masterpiece, begun in 1163 under Louis VII and completed more than 200 years later, cried out for preservation, already showing signs of decay. Although making his mark as a playwright, poet, and artist, the 29-year-old Hugo little guessed that this pioneering work of literary Romanticism would become wildly popular, not only cementing his reputation but inspiring preservation of the cathedral—and a preservation movement far beyond that.

Notre Dame was far more than a setting. As Hugo wrote, “This book is about the cathedral. The cathedral is the protagonist.” In his eyes, it represented the soul of Paris, a symbol of the city’s grandeur and its struggles, an indomitable structure that bore witness to centuries of history. For Quasimodo, it was a home, sanctuary, and prison, all in one. Within its walls, he was raised after being abandoned as an infant by his gypsy parents and taken in by Claude Frollo, the archdeacon of the cathedral.

Quasimodo’s memories of the cathedral are intertwined with both the nurturing and the harshness of Frollo’s care. In his youth, when Quasimodo becomes an object of ridicule, the cathedral’s imposing walls serve both as a protection and a reminder of his outcast status. Here, he experiences a strange form of belonging. On those shadowy walls, he sees everywhere vast carvings in stone, holy and terrible scenes in bas relief of tender angels, gentle shepherds, and Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents.

In the cathedral are all his most tender moments. When Esmeralda, the beautiful sixteen-year-old gypsy girl, is wrongly condemned to die, Quasimodo rescues her, flees with her into the cathedral, and hides her in the sanctuary, known as the Place du Palais-de-Justice. (Although the cathedral's roof and spire were largely lost, the fire for the most part spared the sanctuary and the artworks and relics it held. After restoration, it retains its historical and architectural integrity.)  The scene as Quasimodo drags the gypsy girl through the church’s halls is at once urgent and ironic:

Here, the spaces that he navigates, from hidden corridors to the towering belfry, are his realm, where he hopes to protect Esmeralda from the dangers of a brutal outside world. The church's labyrinthine passages are a refuge whose walls once separated Quasimodo from society but now offer the hope of escape. Claude Frollo, too, sees the cathedral as his personal domain, an institution to which he is bound by duty with a twisted sense of control. Growing up under Frollo’s care, Quasimodo’s legacy is the archdeacon’s conflicting emotions of love, obsession, and authority. Frollo, with his domineering presence, also leaves his mark on the sacred space, as if the cathedral’s stones themselves were imbued with his intentions. He becomes a lust-crazed, ruthless rival of Quasimodo for Esmeralda’s affection, ultimately willing to see her hang. 

We can identify the probable location of the final fateful scene. Quasimodo, who realizes his beloved protector, Dom Claude Frollo, has betrayed Esmeralda, comes upon Frollo standing atop the north tower leaning over the balustrade, watching Esmeralda’s death struggles on the gibbet below in the Place de Greve (now the Place de l’Hotel de Ville). Stealthily climbing the stairs, he suddenly rushes at Frollo and hurls him from the tower (or alternatively, from the connecting Galerie des Chimères between the two towers that spans the front of the cathedral).  Frollo cries only “damnation,” briefly catches a drain spout, hangs on within arm’s reach of the deaf Quasimodo, who only gazes down at Esmeralda; then he falls, striking a roof, before hurtling to the square. The fire spared intact the twin towers and the Galerie des Chimères.

Hugo’s depiction of old Notre-Dame is magnificent. That was his intention. Its towering spires, labyrinthine corridors, and darkened nooks and crannies where Quasimodo grew up are etched into the novel’s fabric. As Hugo describes the cathedral, it is alive with history, a Gothic masterpiece as intricate and wild as the characters who dwell in it:

"The cathedral…is like a book... its arches are great pages; its windows are chapters of the book. It is a great work of art which contains an eternal message." To Quasimodo, it becomes a living, breathing entity, an intimate. He is reared in the shadow of its immense bells, often a prisoner in the belfry, but always deeply connected to its stone heart. The bells, for Quasimodo, are more than just a call to prayer; they are a family. 

Perhaps Quasimodo will be startled or amazed by the renewed Notre Dame but not entirely disappointed. The bell tower is intact. The fire didn’t destroy the Cathedral’s towers themselves, but damaged the bells, which were temporarily moved. Notre-Dame originally had 10 bells, some damaged or destroyed (French revolutionaries melted down thousands of Paris’s bells), so the cathedral will get new ones, although not to replace all the originals (some are being recast). The Cathedral’s famous “Emmanuel,” the bell we can imagine as the steed that Quasimodo rode (“pressed it between both knees, spurred it on with his heels…redoubled the fury of the peal…”), is still in place, preserved. (Recast 1681, this heaviest of Notre Dame’s bells, which rings in F sharp, was named by Louis XIV; it has been acclaimed the most beautiful bell in Europe.)

The bells that Quasimodo rang were integral to Paris’s existence, echoing through its streets to mark the passage of time. As Hugo wrote: “The bell is the soul of the cathedral, and the soul of the bell is Quasimodo.” 

When Hugo’s novel was published, the cathedral’s preservation was a monumental project, costing the French government some 2 million francs—a not-so-small fortune in that era. The chief focus was on repairing the roof, reinforcing the structure, and refurbishing decorative elements that had suffered from centuries of neglect and the conflagration’s clouds of soot and dirt. Following the 2019 fire, restoration has been far more expensive and expansive, with costs nearing 1.0 billion euros. (In real U.S. dollars, $33.6 million versus $1.04 billion.) Both efforts involved meticulous restoration of the original features, but the recent work includes advanced technology and improvements to the cathedral’s fire safety and accessibility. The cathedral, however, remains about the same size and with the same structure as in Hugo’s time.

Today’s Notre-Dame, still wrapping up the restoration, blends old-world grandeur and modern ingenuity. While the exterior resembles what Hugo must have seen, many original materials have been replaced. Much of the artwork and relics have been meticulously preserved and returned to their rightful places. The Cathedral, after the renovation, is immeasurably brighter.

To Quasimodo, wandering the cavernous corridors, it may be arresting to see familiar features with a polished, almost pristine finish. The grand organ, vital to his job as bellringer, now shines with technological upgrades, though it still hums with the same deep, resonant tones. Walls that had echoed with Quasimodo’s haunting bells may now carry the hum of tourists’ chatter, and the bell-tower itself, once Quasimodo’s solitary perch, might seem much more accessible.

From the night the fire broke out, a striking transformation of the cathedral was inevitable. Still, one can picture a stubborn, almost fanatically possessive Quasimodo ascending the same spiral staircase (“no one could climb it so rapidly”) to the bell tower. The iconic gargoyles, which once appeared almost alive, watching over the cathedral, seem now more remote from reality, as though retrofitted for the 21st century. Can Quasimodo still find solace among those stone faces and windswept ledges? Have they been too domesticated by the careful hand of modern restoration?

Quasimodo’s bells, once reverberating over a gritty, pre-industrial Paris, are a renewed symbol of Paris’s enduring spirit. They ring out again over the Seine, but with a freshness in their sound. In the public mind, Quasimodo’s identification with the cathedral lives on (as witness the acclaimed Disney version of “The Hunchback” in 1996) even as the cathedral itself adapts to a more contemporary world.

Notre-Dame’s triumph over disaster is the victory not of a building alone, but a spirit personified by Quasimodo: resilience. The bell-ringer might see a place for himself in this cathedral that has enduring time’s relentless attacks, epic vandalism, and the worst disaster nature could throw at it.

In the end, much is attributable to Hugo’s own spirit. In both The Hunchback and his other advocacy of its preservation, he made the cathedral a symbol of the human spirit prevailing by means of creativity and endurance against wars, revolutions, and natural decay. He said it is “…still, no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice….beautiful as it has been preserved in growing old…” But “…it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the degradations, the countless mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer.”

His plea helped to inspire the 1840 renovation championed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, which averted the cathedral’s likely ruin. In a preface to later editions of the novel, Hugo wrote: “A great building, like a great mountain, is an edifice of centuries. Art often undergoes transformation, but the monument remains. This is how history speaks through architecture.”

Hugo again evoked the comparison with France’s tribulations when he likened the cathedral to the nation’s republican ideals and still later recalled its survival of the battering of history after France’s 1871 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. His words were recalled again after the shocking tragedy of the 2019 fire as voices again rose to  portray the cathedral as not just a structure but an enduring soul of France, which always has risen again.

So, welcome home, Quasimodo, your cathedral still stands.