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Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
1814-1879
As the restorer of Notre-Dame de Paris and the medieval fortress city of Carcassonne, in southern France, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc shaped the way France envisions its Middle Ages. His definition of restoration, to return a building to a complete state that may never have actually existed, remains one of the most debated ideas in the history of historic preservation.
His major projects include Notre-Dame de Paris (1845-1864), Vézelay in Burgundy, Carcassonne, and the Château de Pierrefonds, taken up starting in 1857. A theorist as much as a practitioner, he published the monumental Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, filled with thousands of drawings.
At the Château de Roquetaillade, in the Gironde department in southwestern France, he designed a restoration and medieval-inspired interior decor starting in 1864, with execution largely entrusted to his student Edmond Duthoit. The project continued until 1878.
