On the eve of the completion of restoration work on Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, and before the return of the treasure to the neo-Gothic building built to house it by Jean-Baptiste Lassus and Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc between 1845 and 1850, the Musée du Louvre is presenting an exhibition devoted to the treasure of Notre-Dame from its origins to its revival and flourishing under Viollet-le-Duc in the Second Empire.

The treasure of Notre-Dame, which was completely rebuilt after the Revolution, is famous today for the insignificant relics it houses, in particular those of the Crown of Thorns and the Wood of the Cross, which came from the former treasure of the Sainte-Chapelle and which found a home at Notre-Dame in new reliquaries under the reign of Napoleon I.

The treasury is also famous for the splendour of the masterpieces of French goldsmithery assembled in the 19th century, particularly those designed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc during the Second Empire.

Through more than 120 works, the exhibition retraces the history of the treasury of Paris Cathedral and its resurrection in the 19th century, placing them in the context of its thousand-year history. For the first time, the exhibition offers visitors the chance to go back in time and revisit the history of the treasure before the French Revolution: inventories, historical accounts, paintings, illuminated manuscripts, engravings and other figurative documents all help to retrace part of its long history, dating back to Merovingian times.