Bell towers of Paris

Here I am at last, like Quasimodo on his perch: suspended high above the city and directing a ballet of grimacing gargoyles. Before me - perfectly framed, as if in a theater, by the two towers of the cathedral of Notre-Dame - unfolds the vista of the Seine and Paris.

- Michel Setboun.

For five years, Michel Setboun climbed countless spiral staircases to capture a timeless world high above the city of Paris. From bell tower to bell tower, he captured more than thirty-five Paris monuments in glorious full-color images: the gargoyles of Notre-Dame and the belfry of Saint-Sulpice, the dome of Sacré-Coeur and the Hôtel de Ville. Little has changed since Victor Hugo described the view from Notre-Dame in 1831: "It was an immediate dazzlement of roofs, chimneys, streets, bridges, squares, spires, and bell towers. Everything caught your eye at the same time: the square, decorated church tower, the large, the small, the massive, the lofty - and for a long time the eye lost its way, deep in this labyrinth where there was nothing without originality, without its own reason, genius, or beauty."