A cathedral, a bell-ringer born deformed, a gypsy dancer and an archdeacon who cannot bear either of them, in a Paris of 1482 reconstructed street by street. Hugo wrote it to stop the demolition of medieval buildings, and it worked: the book began the restoration of Notre-Dame itself. The novel's real subject is the architecture, and the plot is what happens inside it. Its 62 original illustrations have been carefully restored and coloured for this edition.