Early church architecture is sometimes described as "Constantinian" after the Roman emperor Constantine, the first to convert to Christianity, who launched a major building program across the empire. The point of departure was the basilica, which originally was a Roman civic hall: a long, broad building with a semicircular apse at the end where dignitaries would hold court. All the developments in ecclesiastical architecture that have followed have retained the basilica as the basic structure. The addition of a transept gave the shape of a cross, and a dome created height, but otherwise the design of modern churches is rooted in the secular architecture of the late Roman empire.

Excavations beneath Notre-Dame de Paris have revealed sculptures dedicated to Jupiter from the reign of the emperor Tiberius (14–37 A.D.), which suggests that, as so often, the church fathers in Paris built their basilica on the site of a pagan temple, in order to give a sense of religious continuity. Up until the construction of the 12th-century cathedral, there were actually two churches on the site: one named after Our Lady, the other after Saint Stephen.

Not much is known of Maurice de Sully, other than that he was born to humble parents at the town of Sully-sur-Loire near Orléans at the beginning of the 12th century and died in 1196. He studied theology in Paris, where he became known as an eloquent preacher, and through the influence of King Louis VII was made archbishop in 1160. Some of his letters survive, including ones sent to Pope Alexander III that take the side of the English archbishop of Canterbury Thomas à Becket in his bitter and ultimately fatal dispute with King Henry II. Alexander attended the laying of the foundation stone of Notre-Dame de Paris in 1163.

By the time Sully was ordained, Paris was already established as the center of an early medieval renaissance of sorts, whose primary manifestation was Gothic architecture. Abbé Suger, a prelate, statesman, and adviser to kings and bishops, had ordered the rebuilding of the basilica of Saint-Denis, a short distance to the north of the capital (and now in a rather grim suburb). With its soaring spires, lofty vaults, and pointed arches, it became the template for the other masterpieces that followed, including Notre-Dame de Paris. In his book Seven Ages of Paris (MacMillan 2002), Alistair Horne writes: "As in Roman days, under Sully the parvis de Notre-Dame became the true center of Paris, the heart of France, with all distances of main roads measured from a bronze plaque set in the middle of it. From the cathedral's seminaries, in the course of the 13th and 14th centuries alone, came no fewer than six popes."

In 1239, King Louis IX (Saint Louis) sanctified the place further when he deposited there the Crown of Thorns, a portion of the True Cross, and a nail of the Passion, relics he had bought from the Byzantine emperor while on Crusade. A decade later, they were transferred to the nearby Sainte-Chapelle. They escaped the depradations of the Revolution and are now back in Notre-Dame, where the Crown of Thorns is brought out for veneration during Lent.

Halfway through his 1831 classic, Victor Hugo takes a break from the flamboyant tale of Esmeralda, Quasimodo, and the evil archdeacon Frollo to deliver his thoughts on the cathedral that forms the centerpiece of the novel. The first chapter of book three is both a hymn to the Notre-Dame's rich architectural past (he defines it as a hybrid of the Gothic and the earlier Romanesque) and also a diatribe against the follies wrought by politics, revolution, and changing fashion. He cites for special opprobrium the removal of the rows of statues of kings from the façade (there were in fact two rows: one of the kings of Judah and another of the kings of France), and the Baroque choir erected by Louis XIV. "On the face of this old queen of French cathedrals, beside each wrinkle you will find a scar. Tempus edox, homo edacior (Time gnaws, man gnaws more), which I would translate: Time is blind, but man is stupid," Hugo wrote.

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