Sanctuary

Curiously devoid of tourists, the Sixth Arrondissement was instead crowded with schoolchildren. Passing them, I walked along the embankment, back and forth across the bridges, with the cranes that now tower above Notre-Dame de Paris serving as my beacon. A pair of British accents broke through the din of French chatter, as two tourists tried to recall exactly when the cathedral had burned. “Oh, no, you’re right,” one said, pointing upriver. It took me a moment to do the math myself: pre-pandemic, yes, but was it pre- or post-getting-Brexit-done?

Since April 15, 2019, Notre-Dame has been a very confused temporal marker: a shuttered spectre of stone that carries the weight of both religious and national identity. Overlooking the site of an earlier, much smaller cathedral — and a temple to Jupiter before that — the iconic bell towers of its western facade, adorned with kings of the Old...