Pending the completion of the restoration work on the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Louvre museum is hosting in the temporary exhibition rooms of the Richelieu Wing an exhibition dedicated to the Treasure of Notre-Dame from its origins to its rebirth and development with Viollet-le-Duc under the Second Empire. The Treasure of Notre-Dame, entirely reconstituted after the Revolution, is famous today for the outstanding relics it contains, in particular those of the Crown of Thorns and the Wood of the Cross which come from the old Treasure of the Sainte-Chapelle and who found at Notre-Dame under Napoleon I a new asylum in new reliquaries. The Treasury is also famous for the splendor of the masterpieces of French goldsmithing which were collected there in the 19th century, in particular those which were designed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc under the Second Empire. The exhibition will also attempt to go back in time and reconnect with the history of the treasure before the Revolution. Inventories, historical accounts, paintings, illuminated manuscripts, engravings and other figurative documents, as well as several works that have come down to us, allow us to retrace part of the long history of the Treasure of Notre-Dame since Merovingian times and to glimpse a richness comparable to that of the most dazzling objects created for Notre-Dame in the 19th century.
