LIKE many others, I breathed a sigh of relief when the French announced this morning Notre Dame could be saved after the devastating fire.
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It seemed unbelievable to me that something that had endured for so long and through so much change could come so close to being lost.
I was going through a significant period of change when I visited Notre Dame in 2011.
A 22-year-old university graduate experiencing a fair amount of instability at home, I jumped at the chance to travel when a friend mentioned her Europe plans to me.
We were to travel together for five weeks - meet in London, catch the train to Paris and from there, bus our way around Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Venice and Rome.
The cathedral showed me perspective during that morning visit - an insight into a world much older than I knew and proof something can stand the test of time and even rise again if there is enough will.
It was my first time overseas on my own, my first test in navigating my way around foreign cities, looking out for myself and returning home in one piece.
Above all, I wanted to visit Notre Dame.
Like most people raised during the '90s, I'd grown up with the Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame movie and wanted to see how the real thing measured up.
It did not disappoint. Despite the crowds of tourists visiting the cathedral that day, inside was completely quiet.
The air felt heavy with history and despite being fitted out with electricity, it was still dark, as though I had gone back in time.
The darkness made stepping into the light of the rose windows all the more dramatic and awe-inspiring.
While sculptures, architecture and stained glass windows in Australian churches usually capture a simple message of worship, Notre Dame's versions were much more foreboding, from the decapitated St Denis portrayed holding his own head to the Last Judgement, where a carved Satan weighed souls.
For illiterate worshippers visiting the cathedral in the 1200s, there was no illusion about what could happen to sinners once they died.
I waited in the queue and paid my five Euros to climb the narrow stairs of the north tower, first to the walkway over the rose window where I could also see the spire, which collapsed during the fire on Monday, and then across to the south tower to the bells and then the very top, 60 metres above the ground.
I found out at the time the original spire had been removed in 1786, just prior to the French Revolution, which to me seemed an impossible task, before it was restored in the 19th Century, another seemingly impossible task.
Yet this is the task the French will face again after Emmanuel Macron announced the cathedral would be rebuilt.
Luckily the sculptures visible in that photo had been removed for restoration prior to the blaze and will hopefully call a new spire home in the future.
The cathedral showed me perspective during that morning visit - an insight into a world much older than I knew and proof something can stand the test of time and even rise again if there is enough will.
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