This is also a Substack post. In late 2024, around the time Notre Dame in Paris was preparing to open to the public again, I was “virtually” walking around the magnificent building with the aid of maps and old photographs. Of course, the position of all the doors and beautiful rose windows have not changed in over one hundred years but still I couldn’t find the exact position of the red door.

Finding the door, I believed at first, would just be a matter of studying a few layouts of Notre Dame and there it would be. This didn’t prove the case. In the picture above you will find one of many such layouts of the cathedral that don’t list the rouge portal.

Over several weeks I searched articles on the cathedral and even recent photographs. No red door. I began to write the scene anyway. My main character Sarah Montague is with her friend Lilith. Together they are going to visit a number of places in Paris that Sarah’s grandmother sketched back in the 1870s. They begin with Notre Dame and start their walk around the magnificent cathedral below the soaring buttresses.

They walk along the quai past the Portal of St Stephen and the South Rose Window. And then around to the magnificent Western Façade with the three portals: the portal of The Last Judgement in the centre, the portal of the Virgin on the left and the portal of Saint Anne on the right. By this time, they are half way around the building with no sign of the red door. They pass the Portal of the Cloisters and the North Rose Window and just beyond, nearly finishing their circumnavigation is the red door. 

I was able to confirm the position with a bright orange and yellow floor plan I found only four days before Notre Dame opened to the public. There it was – the portal rouge. Just before the curve of the Choir section of Notre Dame. A recent photograph confirmed the position. 

I went back through all my saved images to write this essay and discovered I had missed the red door early on in my research because it was marked as portal rouge. And I initially (and stupidly) wasn’t looking out for that name. I’ve also noticed that I missed a reference to it being on the north side. I have to admit that map reading is not my strong suit. 

I definitely know where this magnificent door built around 1270 is now, with its deep red colour and the four figures and an angel above the lintel. But I feel that having so much trouble finding the door made me really get to know the cathedral in depth. And I am thankful for that.