In the original French, the novel’s title is Notre-Dame de Paris. Rather than focusing the title on Quasimodo, the original focuses the audience’s attention on the cathedral itself. This distinction is significant given that the text elevates the Notre-Dame cathedral as an important and symbolic structure in the history of Europe. The cathedral symbolizes a specific era and ideal. The text describes how Notre-Dame represents the ideal of Gothic architecture. The novel is set in the years before the transition from Gothic to Renaissance architecture, so Notre-Dame represents the end of the Gothic era. The church embodies the aesthetic qualities of Gothic architecture, many of which have been changed or removed over time. This slow eradication of Gothic qualities symbolizes how the aesthetic fades with the passing of time. The novel notes that the cathedral is among the last buildings constructed in an era when architecture was the dominant form of communicating public knowledge. Frollo is obsessed with the cathedral’s iconography because it contains important information, which in later eras was documented in printed books. Notre-Dame embodies the Medieval era in a moment when it was beginning to fade from view.

To the characters in the story, however, the cathedral means something quite different.