It is believed that before the arrival of Christianity in France, a Gallo-Roman

temple dedicated to Jupiter stood on the site of Notre-Dame. Evidence for this is
the Pillar of the Boatmen, discovered in 1710. This building was replaced with an
Early Christian basilica. It is unknown whether this church, dedicated to Saint
Stephen, was constructed in the late 4th century and remodelled later, or if it was
built in the 7th century from an older church, possibly the cathedral of Childebert
I.[b] The basilica, later Cathedral of Saint-Étienne [fr] was situated about 40
metres (130 ft) west of Notre-Dame's location and was wider and lower and roughly
half its size. For its time, it was very large—70 metres (230 ft) long—and
separated into nave and four aisles by marble columns, then decorated with mosaics.
[6][13]
Four churches succeeded the Roman temple before Notre-Dame. The first was the 4th-
century basilica of Saint-Étienne, then the Merovingian renovation of that church
which was in turn remodeled into a cathedral in 857 under the Carolingians.[14] The
last church before the cathedral of Notre-Dame was a Romanesque remodeling of the
prior structures that, although enlarged and remodeled, was found to be unfit for
the growing population of Paris.[15][c] A baptistery, the Church of John the
Baptist [fr], built before 452, was located on the north side of the church of
Saint-Étienne until the work of Jacques-Germain Soufflot in the 18th century.[17]
In 1160, the Bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully,[17] decided to build a new and much
larger church. He summarily demolished the Romanesque cathedral and chose to
recycle its materials.[15] Sully decided that the new church should be built in the
Gothic style, which had been inaugurated at the royal abbey of Saint Denis in the
late 1130s.[13]