When future histories of Notre-Dame de Paris are written, three periods will stand out as critical moments in the cathedral's story. The first is its construction, a period that spanned 182 years from 1163 to 1345. The second period began with the cathedral's rehabilitation in the public imagination, initiated by Victor Hugo's 1831 novel that took the building as its namesake, and ended 33 years later in 1864 with the completion of Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc's restoration project. The third period is our current one, beginning with the fire on 15 April 2019 that destroyed the building's roof and Viollet-le-Duc-designedfleche and ending - if we believe the promises of French president Emmanuel Macron - in five years' time, before the opening of the 2024 Paris Olympics. It is often said that buildings which have survived dramatic and threatening events both contain and display their history in their physical structure. But in its evolution through these three periods, the structure of Notre-Dame is a time capsule cataloguing not only its own story, but also the story of an ever-changing world.
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