Eugène Viollet-le-Duc

Viollet-le-Duc worked on the 19th-century restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris. His restoration included the famous spire that became a central feature of the cathedral's modern image.

He led major 19th-century restoration work at the medieval fortified city of Carcassonne. The project shaped how many later visitors imagined medieval French architecture.

His Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle was published across the 1850s and 1860s. It became a major reference work on medieval French architecture.

Viollet-le-Duc argued that Gothic architecture had a rational structural logic, not just a decorative style. That idea influenced later debates about iron, structure, and modern construction.