The first time in almost two decades. Wow. Reminds me of Dr Evil saying "one...mILLION dollars!" Most gilded domes last many decades longer than that.
And "...arguably the world’s most recognized college landmark"? That would take a lot of arguing! I'd never heard of this dome nor seen a photo, and there are so many "notre dame" colleges that I'd only heard of this one from my gf who got her PhD from Northwestern nearby.
If you google "most beautiful college campuses", three of the first five articles use Notre Dame's dome as the primary image for the article. The other two don't have a primary image.
The college is quite famous, is well regarded, and has a pretty storied history particularly as it pertains to their athletics. Popular Hollywood movies have been made about their football team. You may have heard people reference the movie “Rudy.”
I have never heard of this film, no, and I live in the US.
When someone wants a university framing shot (for a film in English I mean) they typically use Harvard or Columbia, or a generic quad or Oxbridge shot. Stanford’s Hoover tower, even MIT’s official dome are well known.
Their football program became well-known in the era when their independence from a league permitted Notre Dame to play on TV every Saturday and bowl games without restriction. They are still the 4th winningest program behind Ohio State, Alabama, and Michigan [0].
The Notre Dame and Michigan football stadiums are just a little more than 150 miles from each other. Those all-time statistics may have been significantly different, given that for a few decades Michigan refused to play Notre Dame because of anti-catholic sentiment.
