Ivan Foletti: Notre-Dame’s Myths. Gothic Architecture, Imperialism, and National Identity

Paris, April 2019. The cathedral is ablaze! The nation mourns, as politicians immediately proclaim the urgency to “start reconstruction.” But which cathedral is supposed to be reborn? This lecture reconsiders Notre-Dame as a dynamic object of cultural memory and political meaning undergoing constant change. From the twelfth century to its grand reopening in 2024, the cathedral was transformed according to the ideological needs of monarchy, revolution, empires, and republics. Beginning with the Gothic project as part of wider Mediterranean and Eurasian networks rather than the isolated pinnacle of French genius, the talk questions the myth of national exceptionalism and eurocentrism. It then analyses Notre-Dame as a victim of revolutionary iconoclasm, the stage for Napoleon’s self-coronation, the canvas for Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s romantic reinvention of modern Paris, and the object of Emmanuel Macron’s effort to weave heritage into a new fabric of political legitimacy. Ultimately, Notre-Dame thus emerges as an object of dense historiography: a palimpsest of power, fantasy, and memory – a place where politics, heritage, and cultural identity clash.

Ivan Foletti is full professor at Masaryk University and privatdozent at the University of Helsinki, he specializes in the study of the historiography of art history in Russia, the USSR, Czechoslovakia and France. He also works on the artistic production of Eurasia in the Late Antique and Early Medieval period and on the Pilgrimage art. He directed twelve major national and international projects (e.g. MSCA-Rise, Lead Agency, SNF Ambizione). He published over 100 articles and is author of eight monographs e.g. From Byzantium to the holy Russia, Rome 2017 [Italian 2011], Objects, relics, and migrants, Rome 2020 [Italian 2018] and, Russian Imperialism and the Medieval Past, York 2024 [Czech 2023, Italian 2025]. He is the head of RE:CENT in Brno, director of the international journal Convivium (2014– ) and of the Hans Belting Library. He taught as invited professor at the universities of Bologna, Fribourg, Helsinki, Lausanne, Naples, Padua, Poitiers, Prague and Venice.