Notre Dame will always be intimately connected with Roland Garros

Notre Dame, we hardly need to be reminded, is a special place for the French. The cathedral has stood at the center of Paris, and of what would become the nation of France, for more than 800 years. The literal center—all distances in the country are measured from “Our Lady.” And while its square stone towers rise just 225 feet, they feel as if they’re looming on the horizon, or in your imagination, wherever you happen to be.

Yet, as we saw from the global reaction to the fire that engulfed the church in April, it isn’t just the French who can claim Notre Dame. It has long been the focal point of virtually every American’s first—and probably second, third and fourth—experience of Paris. The church grounds, and the neighborhood surrounding them, which includes The Louvre and the Seine, could be renamed the city’s American Quarter. As much English is spoken as French, and the couple at the next café table are more likely to be from Texas than they are from anywhere in France.

In other words, Notre Dame is a tourist magnet. But it’s a tourist magnet for a reason. To an American’s eyes, or at least to this American’s eyes, the sight of a man-made structure from the 12th century, standing much as it did then, is equally awe-inspiring and mysterious. The cathedral’s stones are time made tangible, and history made a little less fathomable.

Who today can understand the motivations and beliefs of the medieval men who spent more than a century constructing this monumental tribute to the Virgin Mary? They remain beyond the grasp of my not-Catholic, not-God-fearing, 21st-century mind. What I can understand is the strength of the cathedral’s stone towers; there’s a solemn authenticity to them that goes beyond taste or ideology or politics or religion, and that no American building has the gravitas to match. It’s also hard to match the sound of the famous bells in those towers. On Sunday mornings, they supply a stately, rolling rhythm to Paris, one that blends with the Seine as it flows in and out of the islands at the city’s center.

I’ve covered the French Open off and on for the last 15 years and have never tired of circumnavigating those islands, and hearing those bells, and having Notre Dame in my peripheral vision. Maybe that’s because, as journalists, we have so little time to spend as tourists; I typically go once before the tournament starts, so I know I’m in Paris again, and then once at the end, so I remember that I was there. With the singles finals scheduled for 3:00 P.M. on Saturday and Sunday, there’s an opportunity, finally, to steer clear of Roland Garros and its press room for a few hours.

By then, though, it’s difficult to get the events of the last two weeks—the matches, the upsets, the hisses and boos from the bleachers—out of your mind. The French Open is the tensest of all tennis tournaments. There’s something about the colosseum-like atmosphere of Court Philippe Chatrier, the intensity of the fans’ reactions, and the gladiatorial nature of the matches, that elevates the drama and makes the stakes feel suffocatingly high. After spending two weeks in that hothouse climate, it can be difficult to let it go, even as you take a stroll through a museum.

I can remember walking in the vicinity of Notre Dame in 2004 and pondering the fate of Guillermo Coria, who would try to win his first major title later that afternoon against his countryman Gaston Gaudio—the bells, it seems, really were tolling for El Mago that day. Strolling the same streets over the years, I thought about Li Na as she tried to become the first Grand Slam champion from Asia in 2011; Serena Williams as she attempted to complete her great clay comeback campaign of 2013; and Simona Halep as she tried to put the previous year’s heartbreaking defeat behind her in 2018.

The tension was inescapable, at least in my mind, whenever a final between Rafael Nadal and either Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic loomed later in the afternoon. Would it rain, would the sun come out, would the match have to be postponed? If I could feel the pressure of the moment, what was going through the players’ minds? For me, in those meditative weekend-morning moments, the cathedral of Notre Dame seemed to be intimately connected to that cathedral of tennis across town, Roland Garros. Sports was a religion I could understand.

The other Grand Slam events are played in beautiful cities, but none has a beacon at its center like Notre Dame. I’ve never been drawn back on a final Saturday or Sunday to Federation Square in Melbourne, or Trafalgar Square in London, or—god forbid—Times Square in New York. At the end of my next French Open trip, when Rafa or Serena or maybe Dominic Thiem are getting ready to enter that clay colosseum on the edge of town, I look forward to returning to the city’s heart, to hear Notre Dame’s bells toll again, and to see that its towers are still standing.