Notre-Dame+Cathedral

The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Luxembourg City was built by the Jesuits to serve as a church at their college. Today, it is recognized as the Roman Catholic Church. It was built in 1615 and was modified and expanded in 1938. The Jesuits from Belgium opened a college in 1603, where most Luxembourg students went. The first stone of the church was laid on May 7, 1613 by Father Francois Aldenard. Sculptor Daniel Muller helped build the appearance of the church, including the organ tribute. Later in 1778, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria gifted the church to the City of Luxembourg in 1778, after the Jesuits left in 1773, and became the parish church under the name “Saint Nicolas et Sainte Therese”. On March 31, 1848, it received the name of Notre-Dame under the apostolic vicar Jean-Theodore Laurent. His successor, Nicolas Adames had a Baroque interior refurbished in 1854 in the neo-Gothic style. When Luxembourg was elevated to a bishopric by Pope Pius IX on June 27, 1870, the Notre-Dame Church became the Notre-Dame Cathedral.

Notre-Dame Cathedral suffered damage and decline through the centuries, and after the French Revolution it was rescued from possible destruction by Napoleon, who crowned himself emperor of the French in the cathedral in 1804. Notre-Dame underwent major restorations by the French architect E.-E. Viollet-Le-Duc in the mid-19th century. The cathedral is the setting for Victor Hugo’s historical novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831).

Notre-Dame Cathedral consists of a choir and apse, a short transept, and a nave flanked by double aisles and square chapels. Its central spire was added during restoration in the 19th century. The interior of the cathedral is 427 by 157 feet (130 by 48 meters) in plan, and the roof is 115 feet (35 meters) high. Two massive early Gothic towers (1210–50) crown the western facade, which is divided into three stories and has its doors adorned with fine early Gothic carvings and surmounted by a row of figures of Old Testament kings. The two towers are 223 feet (68 meters) high; the spires with which they were to be crowned were never added. At the cathedral’s east end, the apse has large clerestory windows (added 1235–70) and is supported by single-arch flying buttresses of the more daring Rayonnant Gothic style, especially notable for their boldness and grace. The cathedral’s three great rose windows alone retain their 13th-century glass.