Paris, 1482. Esmeralda, a young Romani street dancer, stirs the desire of several men: the vain officer Phoebus, the penniless poet Gringoire, the archdeacon Claude Frollo, tormented by lust, and his ward Quasimodo, the deaf, misshapen bell-ringer of Notre-Dame. Frollo's obsession sets off a chain of kidnapping, stabbing and trial, with the great cathedral at the centre of it all.