The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

In the Paris of 1482, the deformed bellringer Quasimodo, the archdeacon Frollo consumed by his desire for the gypsy dancer Esmeralda, and the cathedral itself are bound together in a tragedy of love, cruelty and sanctuary. Hugo's Paris is a real medieval city rendered in vast detail: Notre-Dame above all, the Place de Grève with its pillory and gibbet, the thieves' Court of Miracles, and the Montfaucon gallows where the story ends.

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

explicit Notre-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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