Dawn at Notre-Dame, Shared With the Management

Last full day in Paris. So I set an alarm that had no business existing on a trip, and walked down to the island while the streetlamps were still deciding whether to knock off.

And look what you get. Notre-Dame at six in the morning, and a parvis so empty you can hear your own footsteps on it. No queue. No selfie sticks. Just that enormous stone face catching the first grey light, and me standing in the middle of a square that normally holds half of Europe. The cathedral has only been open again since the end of 2024, five years after the fire, and the east end is still wearing its scaffolding like a patient with the bandages half off. From the front though, she is all there. Both towers, the rose window, the three great doorways with their crowds of carved saints… a facade with more figures on it than the square had people in it.

I said almost. Because I was not first. The locals were already out doing their rounds… rats, half a dozen of them, trotting along the hedge line and straight across the paving like they hold the maintenance contract. A street sweeper hummed along behind them and they did not even flinch. One other early riser was crouched by the hedge photographing them, which I respected enormously, because I was doing exactly the same thing. You come for the gothic masterpiece and you end up filming rodents. Movement is movement. Their little bodies flow in a way that would take me twenty pages of ink to get honest.

By half past nine the spell was broken. The green boxes of the bouquinistes were opening along the quay opposite the south flank, prints and old pages out on their hinged lids, and the first tour groups were arriving where the rats had been. Fair enough. I had the square when it mattered, and the rest of the day had a list on it… but that is the next post.