Here's why THIS photo of Notre Dame, taken ONE hour before the fire, is going VIRAL

This photo of a man swinging around a little girl outside the doors of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, just an hour before it was engulfed in flames, is being shared around the world. 

Brooke Windsor, the woman who took the photograph during a trip to Paris, posted it on Twitter as the fire took hold and the tragedy unfolded. She didn't know the man or the little girl when she took the snap.

“I took this photo as we were leaving #NotreDame about an hour before it caught on fire,” she wrote.

“I almost went up to the dad and asked if he wanted it. Now I wish I had,” she added.

She finished her tweet by asking Twitter to help the photo go viral, so they can keep the special image.

She wrote, 'I do not know for sure if it was a dad and daughter, it’s simply the dynamic I observed from them while debating on interrupting this moment. It may be an uncle, brother, friend, who knows until we find them. -It was taken at 5:57 local time.'

The Tweet has now had 75k re-tweets and shares but so far, there's been no joy in finding them.

Earlier today Notre Dame caught fire and hundreds of precious and irreplaceable artefacts were lost as the fire took hold. The beautiful cathedral that stood in the centre of Paris was built in 12AD. 

Investigators have yet to announce how the fire took hold so quickly and burned the entire frame of the church, but it was under-going a vast renovation in a bid to keep it safe for future generations. 

Photos of the spire burning and falling stunned millions of people around the world.