View allAll Photos Tagged modest
La tenuta di Carditello era in origine soltanto un modesto casale rustico, in una zona acquitrinosa che Carlo III di Borbone acquistò nel 1745 per farne un rifugio per la caccia e un “sito reale” come quelli di Capodimonte a Napoli, della stessa Caserta, di Portici, di Procida, di Licola e di Persano.
Il progetto, o meglio il rifacimento della Masseria La Foresta, com’era allora chiamato il casale, fu affidato a Luigi Vanvitelli, che ideò un articolato complesso edilizio con una palazzina centrale e due corpi di fabbrica laterali, con annessa chiesa.
Il tutto si presenta come un singolare esempio dell'architettura barocca innovata profondamente dal grande architetto, autore della reggia e del parco di Caserta.
A Carditello i Borbone andavano a caccia e a cavallo, vi allevavano le bufale e producevano la mozzarella. Al piano terra le stalle e il caseificio, al primo piano l'appartamento nobile, uniti da scale che simboleggiavano l'assenza di barriere tra la nobiltà e i contadini.
For such an important city on the island this station looks somewhat modest and unassuming, not quite what one might expect for so fine a city as Belfast. There is certainly plenty of activity there however, with comings and goings (though I have yet to spot a dog!) A virtual left-over Easter Egg to the one who can identify an Easter Bunny chaser!
Photographer: Robert French
Collection: Lawrence Photograph Collection
Date: Catalogue range c.1880-1900. Perhaps c.1905 (electric tram lines)
NLI Ref: L_ROY_03861
You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie
.......and the original straight from the camera....
Here in my area of North Central Pennsylvania, I don't believe we've had any rain since I snapped this shot on September 5th. The garden is very dry. This day however, this Calendula flower, I think, was quite happy.
Pennsylvania, US, September 5, 2025, IMGP5315
Check out all from our backyard: www.flickr.com/photos/desralea/albums/72177720326793898/
The Grade I Listed Packwoood House which is run by the National Trust, near Lapworth in Warwickshire.
The house began as a modest timber-framed farmhouse constructed for John Fetherston between 1556 and 1560. The last member of the Fetherston family died in 1876. In 1904, and the house was purchased by Birmingham industrialist Alfred Ash. It was inherited by Graham Baron Ash (Baron in this case being a name not a title) in 1925, who spent the following two decades creating a house of Tudor character. He purchased an extensive collection of 16th- and 17th-century furniture, some obtained from nearby Baddesley Clinton. The great barn of the farm was converted into a Tudor-style hall with sprung floor for dancing, and was connected to the main house by the addition of a Long Gallery in 1931.
In 1941, Ash donated the house and gardens to the National Trust in memory of his parents but continued to live in the house until 1947 when he moved to Wingfield Castle.
The famous Yew Garden containing over 100 trees was laid out in the mid-17th century by John Fetherston, the lawyer. The clipped yews are supposed to represent "The Sermon on the Mount". Twelve great yews are known as the "Apostles" and the four big specimens in the middle are 'The Evangelists'. A tight spiral path lined with box hedges climbs a hummock named "The Mount". The single yew that crowns the summit is known as "The Master". The smaller yew trees are called "The Multitude" and were planted in the 19th century to replace an orchard.
The Yew Garden is entered by raised steps and a wrought-iron gate. The garden path follows an avenue of trees, which leads up a spiral hill where a wooden seat is placed beneath a yew tree. This vantage point provides views of the house and the Yew Garden.
Some of the yews at Packwood are taller than 50 feet (15 m). The soil on the estate has a high level of clay, which is detrimental to the trees during wet periods. As a result, parts of the garden are often closed to the public while restoration work is undertaken. The house and gardens are open to the public throughout the whole year since 2013.
Information source:
Cob. The indigenous wisdom pushes the limits of this building material which is so fluid that it manifests such diverse shapes and forms.
The vernacular colour pigments adds to the magnificent beauty.
This house sitting on the main road, modestly, without any ego and self awareness.
Whilst there may be a handful of Neolithic marks on a ridge overlooking the western end of Mont Bégo, the corniform images are all Bronze Age - 4,800 ybp, with engraving continuing for a period of 1,500 - 2,000 years.
Top left : The abstraction of this schematic might seem to be approaching the essential lines of a logogram - but it is a single example and, as far as I am aware, not repeated.
Top right: Possibly the smallest example I witnessed. Seven percussive holes for the beam of the plough and a triangle for the operator. Rather than 'bad drawing' or a naive drawing by a youngster, this seems to me to be a wish to get-down the essential line ideas of an image in a limited amount of time. Was it getting dark? Had others already stated to descend? Were there rolls of thunder in the distance? Was it too hot? Was it in the character of the artist to be rushed? Speed may also change the style of the petroglyph.
Lower left: A proud beam, a clear mainshare, one corniform cow with a rounded body and one with a squared body, a yoke and, low down, potentially the lines of the crofter.
Lower right: Potentially two thicknesses to the beam of the plough and an attempt to depict the blade end that needed an explanation by the crofter artist.
Despite schematic conventions, there are too many descriptive details to individual examples for these rock art ploughs to be considered as pictographs. Despite that, there are too many line conventions, so typical of writing, for the images to be thought as only being 'registers of activity'. Within the conventions there are clear categories of variant around the depiction of the horns and body of the cows, with variables that are far too dynamic to be ignored.
There is a reported statistic of 13 399 corniform petroglyphs around Mont Bégo of which 1067 have been seen to have yokes.
AJM 28.1.19
Lavender Mansions is a modest block of apartments for the Residential zone. The design is based on one I saw in a YouTube video on a collaborative Micropolis display at a big US show (also here on Flickr at flic.kr/p/gtwzvb). However, I changed the colour scheme and added some landscaping of my own devising to complete this 1/4 block for my own little city. Ref: D1548-018
Built-in shorts
I hear skorts are making a comeback! I dislike those that look like shorts from the back (with a skirt-like flap on the front) and prefer those that are simply skirts with built-in shorts.
Although short, this is my most modest mini because it is not a skirt . . . it is a skort! This one is a pretty thick fabric that is uncomfortable when it’s really hot, but good for an 80 degree day.
Shirt, Dolce Vita (thrifted). Skirt, Faded Glory (thrifted). Sneakers, Puma. Hat, thrifted. Earrings, Ali’s Boutique. Bag, Fossil.
Virtue In World
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Serena%20Solace/63/183/1222
Maitreya-Slink Physique and Hourglass- Belleza Venus-Freya and Isis.
Can be worn seperate
The library at Holkham Hall, belonging to the Earl of Leicester, this room is still used by the earl's family for entertaining, to the right of the fireplace a concealed door behind the bookcase, allowing servants to gain access while causing a minimum of disturbance and don't we all know how embarrassing an indiscrete servant can be..
The gardens of the Grade I Listed Packwoood House which is run by the National Trust, near Lapworth in Warwickshire.
The house began as a modest timber-framed farmhouse constructed for John Fetherston between 1556 and 1560. The last member of the Fetherston family died in 1876. In 1904, and the house was purchased by Birmingham industrialist Alfred Ash. It was inherited by Graham Baron Ash (Baron in this case being a name not a title) in 1925, who spent the following two decades creating a house of Tudor character. He purchased an extensive collection of 16th- and 17th-century furniture, some obtained from nearby Baddesley Clinton. The great barn of the farm was converted into a Tudor-style hall with sprung floor for dancing, and was connected to the main house by the addition of a Long Gallery in 1931.
In 1941, Ash donated the house and gardens to the National Trust in memory of his parents but continued to live in the house until 1947 when he moved to Wingfield Castle.
The famous Yew Garden containing over 100 trees was laid out in the mid-17th century by John Fetherston, the lawyer. The clipped yews are supposed to represent "The Sermon on the Mount". Twelve great yews are known as the "Apostles" and the four big specimens in the middle are 'The Evangelists'. A tight spiral path lined with box hedges climbs a hummock named "The Mount". The single yew that crowns the summit is known as "The Master". The smaller yew trees are called "The Multitude" and were planted in the 19th century to replace an orchard.
The Yew Garden is entered by raised steps and a wrought-iron gate. The garden path follows an avenue of trees, which leads up a spiral hill where a wooden seat is placed beneath a yew tree. This vantage point provides views of the house and the Yew Garden.
Some of the yews at Packwood are taller than 50 feet (15 m). The soil on the estate has a high level of clay, which is detrimental to the trees during wet periods. As a result, parts of the garden are often closed to the public while restoration work is undertaken. The house and gardens are open to the public throughout the whole year since 2013.
Information source:
Isaac Brock is twenty-nine, charming, smart and successful. He drives a metallic-gray Volvo V70 wagon and lives with his "totally not insane" girlfriend, Katie, and their slightly neurotic eight-month-old mutt, Sloan, in a neat bungalow in a quiet, gentrified Portland, Oregon, neighborhood. He's got a live-in personal assistant, Richard, who runs Brock's errands by day and fetches beers for him by night. He's in negotiations for a lucrative music-publishing deal, and he and Katie are looking to buy a house. Good News for People Who Love Bad News, the latest album by Brock's band, Modest Mouse, has sold 687,000 copies -- more than all three previous Modest Mouse albums combined. And after eleven troubled years on the Pacific Northwest scene -- years scarred by drug abuse, injury, mental illness, alcoholism, occasional homelessness and death -- Modest Mouse have, improbably, become one of the summer's breakthrough bands.
So why, on this starry, seventy-degree June night, does Brock give off the impression that it might all just disintegrate at any moment, that chaos is around the corner? "It's just the way things are -- they're good, they're fucked up, it is what it is," he says, elbows on the bar next to a fresh Pacifico and a shot of Patron at the Bonfire Lounge, a no-frills hangout near his house. It should be noted that we've been drinking since well before sundown, and that the sun will rise again in a little more than three hours. Brock, dressed in dark jeans, a red-checked short-sleeve Levi's shirt and blue Adidas, is built like a Tonka truck -- squat, solid -- and he moves like one, with weight and purpose. The liquor has put him in a carousing mood; he's swinging his arms, hammering the bar and talking loudly to anyone who will listen.
Right now, despite the fact that he's leaving for a European tour in three days, Brock is pleading with the Bonfire's co-owner, Dimetri, that he needs a job. He first inquires about a position as "the drink drinker, steward of the alcohol" then moves on to chef. (Brock actually is an excellent, inventive cook, his girlfriend and others confirm.) "I could cook you your own dick and it would be so good you'd eat it," he shouts. "Yeah!" No reaction. "Oh, no, wait, that was not really a good sell," he says. "Kind of icky." Pause. "Could we get back to me being a good cook?"
"What do you like cooking?" asks Dimetri.
"What's in the fridge?"
Things devolve from there, as does my ability to take notes. I mark down that Brock eventually switches from tequila to vodka ("Wrong decision," he admits later), and that his two companions -- Benjamin Weikel, who plays drums on the new Modest Mouse album, and Joe Plummer, the band's percussionist on loan from The Black Heart Procession, one of Brock's favorite bands -- disappear at some point. By that time, Brock has already made new friends at the bar.
"How many political idealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?" he asks one of them.
How many?
"None. Political idealists can't change shit."
Brock gives himself a big laugh for that one, and then the jokes get worse. In the middle of one that somehow involves his mustache, olives and "British ladies," he seems to realize that he's lost his audience -- and maybe his grip. So he improvises an ending: "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I invented bullshit!" he shouts, convincingly. Two guys at the bar halfheartedly clap.
Brock takes a bow. "You're welcome, world," he says. "You're welcome."
The bartender interrupts: "Dude, go home."
Two years ago, when he began work on Good News, Brock was heavily depressed, with too much time on his hands. He was living in a small house owned by his stepfather in rural Cottage Grove, Oregon -- "the covered-bridge capital of Oregon" -- trying to make sense of the death of two friends: Chris Takino, the owner of Mouse's first label, Up Records, who died of leukemia, and a woman he prefers not to talk about. "They were both young," he says. "It wasn't drugs. It made no sense."
One night he was working alone in the studio and things got out of hand. "I was drinking to the point that I wasn't all that handy," he says. "I don't know what I was fucking with, but the next morning I woke up and my thumb was broken, there was bent metal and shit all over the studio. I was in, like, an extra bed in the house, not my bed. I thought, 'This isn't good.' "
The rest of the band -- drummer Jeremiah Green, bassist Eric Judy and guitar player Dann Gallucci -- were living in Seattle, so Brock suggested renting a house in Portland -- a midway point -- to work on the album. Green, also a heavy drinker and depressive, was suffering from what Brock calls "lazy psychiatry," taking large doses of anti-depressants that made him aggressive and paranoid. Brock had a difficult time playing guitar with his broken thumb, and tensions were mounting. Says Green, "Isaac and I were really fueling each other's fires, letting our bad selves go crazy." Judy and Gallucci tried to keep working, but they remember spending most of the time cooking and watching TV.
"Pretty much all we did for the six months we were trying to write the record was play 'Dance Hall' " -- three minutes of obsessive pounding and chanting that eventually did make the album -- "for about two hours a day," Brock says. "And get really drunk."
Out of desperation, with three songs semifinished, the band booked studio time near Seattle. The first day of recording, Green showed up late; the second, during the middle of recording a song, he ripped his shirt off, began screaming obscenities and quit the band. "I wasn't healthy in my head," Green says. "I was on overdrive, drinking, taking other things to try and calm down, and it turned into this thing where I was hallucinating and having paranoia about people, the whole world." Green landed briefly in a psychiatric hospital, and he has spent the last year putting his life back together. He recently rejoined the band for its summer tour.
A few days after Green's breakdown, the rest of the band sat down to talk about the future. "We said, 'So, are we going to do this band, or what?' " Brock remembers. "I was depressed as fuck, myself, but there was a certain point where I had to decide. I had to start believing in" -- he lowers his voice -- "the power of positive thinking." He laughs. "Seriously. I figured out you could do it if you have to. So we agreed to continue, and I fuckin' quit drinking until halfway through the record."
The band -- with Weikel on drums -- decamped to Oxford, Mississippi, to work with producer Dennis Herring, whom they had never met before but knew from his work with Camper Van Beethoven. "After things fell apart, we were like, 'Let's get away from the bad mojo,' " says Brock. They finished writing the album in about a month: "Once we made the decision, it was really easy."
Good News for People Who Love Bad News is, like all Modest Mouse records, full of jittery guitars, angular rhythms and understated, disarming melodies. Good News is different, though. It's prettier and more focused; for the first time, the melodies aren't buried in noise and jagged shifts in tempo and melody. Brock's favorite themes -- drifting, drinking, suburban dystopia -- are all here, as well as an unusual number of songs that refer to death. But throughout the album, his sarcasm and bitterness have softened into a more optimistic worldview. In the radio hit "Float On," and several other songs, the message is simple: No matter how fucked up things get, hang on, life will work out in the end.
Gallucci says he was surprised at first by "Float On." "It was the most positive Modest Mouse song I'd ever heard," he says. "I was a little thrown off, but I was really happy, too. We kind of needed it." He says that he's always paid close attention to the message in Brock's music -- it's often the only way he knows what's on Brock's mind. "The easiest way for Isaac to communicate about how he's feeling or about things that are important is through his music," Gallucci says. "And that's from being friends with him for a long time. I've often felt like I was getting more of a real answer from him through his lyrics than I would from talking to him."
Brock pinpoints his change in attitude to a song he heard as Modest Mouse were bottoming out, called "Life Is Still Sweet," by the New York band White Hassle. "When I heard it, I thought, 'This is nice. This is actually an unsarcastically positive song.' I was like, 'Let's fuck this doom-and- gloom bullshit.' It was a really good thing to get reminded of, you know?"
One night in El Paso, Texas, Brock got drunk and tattooed life is still sweet on his own forearm. He says, laying his arm on the bar to show the thick, shaky lines of black ink, "I made up my mind that things were going to be better."
Brock grew up in Issaquah, Washington, seventeen miles east of Seattle. In his early teens, the house he shared with his mom and aunt flooded, and the family moved into a trailer with his mom's new husband, who was also Brock's uncle. (Brock's mother had left his dad for his dad's brother.) There wasn't any room for Isaac, so he stayed behind in the flooded house until he was eventually evicted. For a while, Brock lived in neighbors' basements, then in a shed next to his mother's trailer, where he began writing songs and playing guitar. "We were dirt-poor," he says. "People had to put boxes of food at my mom's front door so the family could eat. One of the reasons I moved around so much is because there was never really room for me at home."
Brock went to school sporadically and worked several jobs to support himself and help out his family. At night, after getting off work at a Seattle theater, he'd go to local clubs to see bands such as the Screaming Trees and Nirvana. When Brock and Judy met during high school, the bassist remembers that "he was this funny excited kid -- he'd do anything, try anything." Gallucci adds, "He had tons of energy and was probably way more ambitious than anyone else, but also completely crazy in a funny way."
In 1992, when he was sixteen, Brock dropped out of school, moved to D.C. and lived with his girlfriend. For the next several years, Brock moved around a lot -- back and forth from Issaquah, where he took a community-college course to get his high school diploma, back to D.C. and to New York's East Village to live with a girlfriend, before eventually landing in Seattle. He earned a living cleaning out meat trucks, posing as a nude model for art classes and taking part in medical experiments.
In 1996, Modest Mouse released their debut, This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About, followed a year later by The Lonesome Crowded West, which remains one of the finest post-grunge Seattle rock albums. Brock had begun writing the next album, The Moon and Antarctica, when, in early 1999, a nineteen-year-old woman accused him of date rape and filed a report with the Seattle police. Formal charges were never made, but the local alternative press hounded Brock, and the insular Seattle rock scene turned against him and the band. For a while, Brock moved to Gainesville, Florida.
Brock has always maintained his innocence. "The whole situation of he said/she said was not worth going into because you're just going to believe what you're going to believe," he says. "I would have turned against me, too. Up until the point that that happened, I just didn't believe people lied about [rape]. It was my sort of MO -- how I had been brought up."
Brock's next stop was Chicago, to record The Moon and Antarctica. It didn't take long for trouble to find him. One night he left his apartment to have a smoke and walk the dog. Some kids were hanging out in the park across the street, and he walked up to say hi. Unprovoked, Brock says, one of them punched him in the face and broke his jaw. He's still numb on the right side of his mouth where a steel plate was inserted.
The Moon and Antarctica sold moderately well, especially for a record that got little support from its label, Epic. Convinced Modest Mouse would soon be dropped, Brock recorded a side project, Ugly Casanova. But around that time, he got into a car accident and was arrested for drunken driving. According to Brock, a friend in the car dislocated her thumb in the accident, and Brock says the charge was elevated to attempted murder. A year later, he was stopped crossing the border from Canada after visiting Niagara Falls. "The attempted-murder charge came up, which looks pretty bad on paper, I admit," Brock says. He was jailed for six days in Niagara County, New York, and later served thirty days on a highway cleanup crew.
Brock's friends have encouraged him to phone for a ride home from the bar tonight, but despite the fact that he's got no valid driver's license and only limited motor facilities left, he decides to navigate the short distance himself. (One reason Brock got the Volvo is safety, he says; the other is that he thinks it's an unlikely car to get stopped by the cops.) Back home, Brock is not ready for the night to end. A bottle of port appears, and we step out onto the porch, where he can smoke. Brock spends a lot of time on this porch; there's even a bottle opener mounted to the mailbox. He says that life's been tense at home lately, because Katie's not thrilled that he's leaving on tour for most of the summer. (Modest Mouse were booked on the canceled Lollapalooza; the band will headline its own U.S. tour starting July 16th instead.) "It's hard for some people to understand that I've been doing this since I was superyoung," he says. "This is what I do -- me and Dan and Eric, we're all lifers. That doesn't make sense to her. I try to say, 'I met you on tour, for Christ's sake; you knew this when you started dating me.' You know, this is how I move around, and if I don't do this, I've got to move to cities -- some people just have got to move."
By 1 p.m. the next day, the wine and beer bottles are cleaned up, there are no cigarette butts on the porch, and the place is tidy and flooded with sunshine. Brian Eno is playing on Brock's PowerBook. Sloan hurt his foot, so Brock is carrying the fifty-pound shepherd mix around the house like a lap dog. Eventually, the two of them fall onto the couch together, beneath a wall that exhibits Brock's collection of framed, mounted butterflies.
A little later we sit outside at Brock's favorite Cuban restaurant, drinking espresso and eating empanadas and beef-tongue stew. The place is urban rustic, with brightly painted tables, flowers growing along the sidewalk and young couples drinking beer in the sunshine, as if life is too short to spend a weekday afternoon at work.
"My goal is to buy a three-story building," Brock says. "I'd use one floor as a studio. On the ground floor I'd have a junk shop and sell CDs -- but only about my thirty favorite CDs, not one of those make-everyone-happy places, everyone's buying up this new blah-di-blah-blah record. No, it'll be just my picks. Then on the other floor there will be a restaurant where there will be only two options: vegetarian or not. And about a six-person bar."
I tell him that for a guy who admits to chronic restlessness, it sounds like he's planting roots. "Yeah, I think I could," he says. Then, as if by reflex, "I can also see myself moving away from here, too."
la description se trouve ci-dessous. C'est la première fois que je poste une autre photo... De grâce, laissez-moi apprendre!!!
Virtue In World
maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Serena%20Solace/63/183/1222
Maitreya-Slink Physique and Hourglass- Belleza Venus-Freya and Isis.
Can be worn seperate
Rolleiflex SL66 medium format camera
Carl Zeiss Rollei-HFT Planar 2.8/80 lens
Kodak Ektar 100 film
Scan from negative @4800dpi, downsized x0.5
coming to auto show only to realize there are no cars on my shoots. i think i have to come some more to events of such. it may be a painful learning experience......SOOC's coming.
Not far from its headwaters in Minnesota, the Mississippi river winds its way through quite different landscapes as it begins the journey to the gulf.
Notre-Dame, Paris, France.
Notre-Dame es una catedral de culto católico, sede de la archidiócesis de París, la capital de Francia. Dedicada a la Virgen María, madre de Jesucristo, se sitúa en la pequeña isla de la Cité, rodeada por las aguas del río Sena. Es uno de los monumentos más populares de la capital francesa.
Se trata de uno de los edificios más señeros y antiguos de cuantos se construyeron en estilo gótico. El uso innovador de la bóveda de crucería y del arbotante, los enormes y coloridos rosetones y el naturalismo y la abundancia de decoración escultórica lo diferencian de la arquitectura románica.
Su edificación comenzó en el año 1163 y, para 1260, ya estaba completada en su mayor parte, aunque se terminó en el año 1345 y se modificó de manera frecuente a lo largo de los siglos siguientes, debido a necesidades de renovación y también por la evolución del gusto dominante. En 1786 la aguja central, dañada por las inclemencias del tiempo, hubo de ser desmontada. Durante la década de 1790, tras la Revolución francesa, Notre Dame fue desacralizada y sufrió el robo y dispersión de muchos de sus bienes así como la profanación de parte de su imaginería religiosa, que quedó dañada y destruida. Tras ser empleada como almacén, en 1802, se devolvió su uso a la Iglesia católica gracias a Napoleón Bonaparte, quien se coronaría emperador en Notre Dame dos años después. Con todo, el templo subsistió en modestas condiciones hasta que la publicación en 1831 de Nuestra Señora de París, novela escrita por Victor Hugo y cuyo escenario principal era Notre Dame, reavivó el interés popular por la vieja catedral parisina. El arquitecto Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, defensor del naciente estilo neogótico, encabezó un proyecto de restauración que comenzó en 1845 y se prolongó durante un cuarto de siglo; esta intervención, demasiado audaz según algunos historiadores, no solo reparó ornamentos dañados sino que también incorporó elementos enteramente nuevos, como una nueva aguja de 96 metros de altura y las hoy célebres Quimeras, y demolió los edificios circundantes. Ya en 1963 se procedió a limpiar de hollín la fachada, que así recuperó su color original. Entre 1991 y 2000 se llevó a cabo una nueva campaña de limpieza y restauración, pero el edificio seguía necesitando intervenciones en otras partes, como su aguja central, y (tras dificultades para reunir financiación) las reparaciones se reactivaron en 2019.
El 15 de abril de 2019 el edificio sufrió daños significativos a causa de un incendio; dos tercios de la techumbre fueron destruidos, la aguja central de Viollet-le-Duc cayó y los rosetones quedaron dañados. El fuego pudo deberse a un descuido durante las obras de remozamiento que se estaban efectuando, pero esta suposición está sujeta a una investigación ahora en curso.
Notre-Dame is a cathedral of Catholic worship, seat of the archdiocese of Paris, the capital of France. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ, it is located on the small island of la Cité, surrounded by the waters of the River Seine. It is one of the most popular monuments in the French capital.
It is one of the most outstanding and oldest buildings of all those built in the Gothic style. The innovative use of the rib vault and the flying buttress, the huge and colorful rose windows and the naturalism and abundance of sculptural decoration differentiate it from Romanesque architecture.
Its construction began in the year 1163 and, by 1260, it was already completed for the most part, although it was finished in the year 1345 and it was modified frequently throughout the following centuries, due to renovation needs and also due to the evolution of the dominant taste. In 1786 the central spire, damaged by inclement weather, had to be dismantled. During the 1790s, after the French Revolution, Notre Dame was desecrated and suffered the theft and dispersal of many of its assets as well as the desecration of part of its religious imagery, which was damaged and destroyed. After being used as a warehouse in 1802, its use was returned to the Catholic Church thanks to Napoleon Bonaparte, who would crown himself emperor at Notre Dame two years later. All in all, the temple survived in modest conditions until the publication in 1831 of Our Lady of Paris, a novel written by Victor Hugo and whose main setting was Notre Dame, revived popular interest in the old Parisian cathedral. The architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, defender of the nascent neo-Gothic style, led a restoration project that began in 1845 and lasted for a quarter of a century; This intervention, too daring according to some historians, not only repaired damaged ornaments but also incorporated entirely new elements, such as a new 96-meter-high spire and the now-famous Chimeras, and demolished the surrounding buildings. Already in 1963, the façade was cleaned of soot, thus recovering its original color. A new clean-up and restoration campaign was carried out between 1991 and 2000, but the building still needed interventions elsewhere, such as its central spire, and (after difficulties in raising funding) repairs were reactivated in 2019.
On April 15, 2019, the building suffered significant damage due to a fire; Two thirds of the roof were destroyed, the central spire of Viollet-le-Duc fell and the rose windows were damaged. The fire may have been caused by carelessness during the renovation work being carried out, but this assumption is subject to an investigation now underway.