The Booksellers portal is certainly the first of the major works undertaken in the cathedral at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th centuries. Will follow the chapel of the Virgin and the southern portal, known as Calende, the chapels of the nave and the upper part of the facade.

The canons lived in houses in the area north of the cathedral. They had to make the detour via the western facade to enter the church, which was very uncomfortable. In 1280, Guillaume de Flavacourt ascended the episcopal throne of Rouen. He was a former canon of the cathedral, so he easily accepted the requests of his former classmates to open direct access to the cathedral in the north arm of the transept.

The project manager Jean Davi was in charge of the construction which lasted almost half a century. The architect Jean Davi found himself in charge of the work. The chapel of Sainte-Marie, which was against the crosspiece of the transept, lost its central part. First called the Portal of Blessed Mary, it took the name of Portal of the Fellows which it carried for most of the Middle Ages.

The decor is sumptuous and spills over into the surrounding buildings. On each side of the portal, quatrefoils show a fantastic bestiary and scenes from the genesis. The incomplete tympanum shows a Last Judgment. Above, the beautiful radiant rose is like a wheel of light.

As at the Calende portal, the whole is framed by two huge towers made light by their openwork decoration. The name Portal of the Booksellers comes from the presence of the cathedral library in the building that borders the courtyard to the west. In the Middle Ages, the terms bookstore and library were synonymous.

The statuary has suffered from the injuries of time or men. In the sixties of the 15th century, the architect Guillaume Pontif removed the statues from the large niches of the splays which threatened ruin. Many heads and attributes disappeared during the Huguenot occupation of 1562.