The Bard Graduate Center Mounts the First U.S. Exhibition of Viollet-le-Duc’s Expansive Drawing Practice

Patrick Templeton | Architectural Record | 5th February 2026

The 2019 fire at Notre Dame cathedral drew attention to Viollet-le-Duc, the architect responsible for its 1864 restoration. Praised for rescuing national treasures such as the cathedral and the medieval town of Carcassonne, a later generation accused him of “defiguring” those same structures. Wanting to re-create the “halcyon past”, his buildings were what one writer calls “exercises in inauthenticity”. Ironically, his original drawings assisted in Notre Dame’s restoration including his controversial spire.