The cathedral0% in

Quasimodo

Notre-Dame

The cathedral

High in the towers of Notre-Dame lives Quasimodo, the deaf, deformed foundling raised by the archdeacon Frollo to ring its great bells. Hugo made the cathedral the book's true hero, and wrote it partly to save the crumbling building itself, so that Quasimodo and his stone home are inseparable, each the other's refuge and prison.

Throughout

explicitNotre-Dame de Paris, the real cathedral, is home to the bellringer Quasimodo and the heart of the novel; sited on the Île de la Cité.

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The square25% in

Esmeralda

The Place de Grève

The square

In the Place de Grève the gypsy Esmeralda dances with her little goat, and here Quasimodo is pilloried and given water by the girl he will come to love. Hugo makes the square the meeting point of the city's cruelty and its rare mercy, the stage for both public punishment and the one act of kindness that redeems the bellringer.

The square chapters

explicitThe Place de Grève, the real public square of medieval Paris where the pillory and gallows stood, is where Esmeralda dances and Quasimodo is flogged; sited there.

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The beggars50% in

Esmeralda

The Court of Miracles

The beggars

In the Court of Miracles, the lawless kingdom of Paris's beggars and thieves where the lame walk and the blind see, the poet Gringoire is nearly hanged and later the vagabonds storm Notre-Dame to save Esmeralda. Hugo brings the medieval underworld to teeming life, a counter-city with its own king and laws beneath the respectable one.

The Court of Miracles chapters

inspired byThe Court of Miracles, the thieves' and beggars' quarter, was a real feature of old Paris; Hugo's version is drawn from it and sited in the medieval city.

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The rescue75% in

Frollo

The sanctuary

The rescue

As Esmeralda is led to the gallows on the parvis, Quasimodo swings down from the towers, carries her inside, and claims for her the cathedral's ancient right of sanctuary, crying the word from the heights. Hugo stages the novel's most famous image here, the monster saving the beauty, holding the mob and the law at bay within the walls of stone.

The sanctuary chapters

explicitThe parvis before Notre-Dame, where Esmeralda is brought to be hanged and Quasimodo snatches her into the cathedral's sanctuary, is sited at the cathedral square.

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The ending100% in

Quasimodo

Montfaucon

The ending

When Esmeralda is at last hanged and Frollo laughs from the tower, Quasimodo hurls the archdeacon to his death and vanishes, to be found long after at Montfaucon, a skeleton curled around her bones. Hugo closes on this last, unbearable tenderness, the deformed bellringer choosing death in the charnel gallows rather than life without her.

The final chapter

inspired byThe gibbet of Montfaucon, the real great gallows of medieval Paris where the dead were left, is where Quasimodo goes to die beside Esmeralda's body; sited at its historic location.

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