Notre-Dame Cathedral is famous for its gargoyles and other decorative figures. However, not all of them serve a functional role in water drainage.
Many of these figures, which include grotesques and chimeras, adorn the exterior. They were added during the restoration by architect E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc in the mid-19th century.
Among these creatures, the **Styrga **(also known as the Strix) stands out. Resembling a bat, it features a large head, voracious beak, wings, and horns
“strive for, seek eagerly to attain, long to reach,” c. 1400, aspiren, from Old French aspirer “aspire to; inspire; breathe, breathe on” (12c.), from Latin aspirare “to breathe upon, blow upon, to breathe,” also, in transferred senses, “to be favorable to, assist; to climb up to, to endeavor to obtain, to reach to, to seek to reach; infuse,” from ad “to” (see ad-) + spirare “to breathe” (see spirit (n.)).
The notion is of “panting with desire,” or perhaps of rising smoke. The literal sense of “breathe, exhale” (1530s) is rare in English.
The previous sacristy had not fallen victim to the usual ravages of time and weather, but to rioters in July 1830, who then came back to plunder and entirely destroy it in February. Even all the stained-glass windows got smashed. The large old Archiepiscopal Palace on site was brought down with it.
These catastrophes, in other words, occurred during and following the July Revolution of 1830—the second French Revolution—which ended the Bourbon Restoration and swept in the July Monarchy of King Louis-Philippe, who headed the Orléanist branch of the Bourbon line.
In fact, Victor Hugo published his Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) in 1831, which set in motion the dynamics that led to renovating the cathedral, in the wake of this Revolution, not the first one! So, too, did Eugène Delacroix paint his iconic Lady Liberty Leading the People to the Barricades in 1830, which proudly uses the cathedral to anchor the background at the right—as the Tricolore flies high from the south tower.
When Viollet’s spire was being raised, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann became the Préfect de la Seine, or chief administrator of the Paris region. This mayoral-like appointment was made in 1853 by Emperor Napoléon III (Louis-Philippe’s successor), who called for modernizing the city in a staggering slate of great works, most visible in the wide new boulevards that slashed across, and transformed, the map of Paris.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Eugène_Haussmann
Haussmann’s plan for Paris inspired the urban planning and creation of similar boulevards, squares and parks in Cairo, Buenos Aires, Brussels, Rome, Vienna, Stockholm, Madrid, and Barcelona. After the Paris International Exposition of 1867, William I, the King of Prussia, carried back to Berlin a large map showing Haussmann’s projects, which influenced the future planning of that city.[23] His work also inspired the City Beautiful Movement in the United States. Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park in New York, visited the Bois de Boulogne eight times during his 1859 study trip to Europe, and was also influenced by the innovations of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. The American architect Daniel Burnham borrowed liberally from Haussmann’s plan and incorporated the diagonal street designs in his 1909 Plan of Chicago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Viollet-le-Duc
His writings on decoration and on the relationship between form and function in architecture had a fundamental influence on a whole new generation of architects:
Statue of Liberty
While planning the design and construction of the Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World) sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi interested Viollet-le-Duc, his friend and mentor, in the project.[28] As chief engineer,[28] Viollet-le-Duc designed a brick pier within the statue, to which the skin would be anchored.[29] After consultations with the metalwork foundry Gaget, Gauthier & Co., Viollet-le-Duc chose the metal which would be used for the skin, copper sheets, and the method used to shape it, repoussé, in which the sheets were heated and then struck with wooden hammers.[28][30] An advantage of this choice was that the entire statue would be light for its volume, as the copper need be only 0.094 inches (2.4 mm) thick.
Viollet-le-Duc famously defined restoration in volume eight of his Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XI au XVI siecle of 1858: “To restore a building is not to maintain it, repair it or remake it: it is to re-establish it in a complete state which may never have existed at any given moment.”
During the entire career of Viollet-le-Duc, he was engaged in a dispute with the doctrines of the École des Beaux-Arts, the leading architectural school of France, which he refused to attend as a student, and where he taught briefly as a professor, before being pressured to depart.
De Quincy and his followers denounced the Gothic style as incoherent, disorderly, unintelligent, decadent and without taste. Viollet-le-Duc responded, “What we want, messieurs, is the return of an art which was born in our country….Leave to Rome what belongs to Rome, and to Athens what belongs to Athens. Rome didn’t want our Gothic (and was perhaps the only one in Europe to reject it) and they were right, because when one has the good fortune to possess a national architecture, the best thing is to keep it.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcassonne
Its citadel, known as the Cité de Carcassonne, is a medieval fortress dating back to the Gallo-Roman period and restored by the theorist and architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc between 1853 and 1879. It was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1997 because of the exceptional preservation and restoration of the medieval citadel.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Château_de_Roquetaillade
Charlemagne, on his way to the Pyrenees with Roland, built the first fortification there.[2] Of this old castle, nothing remains but imposing ruins.[1]
In 1306, with the permission of the English King Edward I, Cardinal de la Mothe, nephew of Pope Clement V built a second fortress (le Château Neuf).
This new castle was square in plan with six towers and a central keep. The entire structure was restored and transformed by Viollet-le-Duc and one of his pupils, Duthoit, between 1860 and 1870. The extraordinary interior decorations, with its furnishings and paintings, were created by Viollet-le-Duc and are listed as French Heritage.[1]
http://chateauroquetaillade.free.fr/English/Historique du ch%e2teau -Anglais-.html
What we see today is a unique example of feudal architecture, that is to say two fortresses within the same castle walls. Roquetaillade has been home of the same family since its origins.
EPISTEME 