A woman interviewed from inside Notre Dame by Britain's Sky News told of hearing shots and screams, then seeing a human wave of fearful sightseers pour into the cathedral for shelter. The police shot the suspect, who was hospitalized.
The Paris prosecutor's office said it had opened a terrorism investigation and confirmed that the man had attacked the police officer with a hammer.
"A man came behind these police officers and, armed with a hammer, started hitting one of them". One officer was killed and two others were injured. One of his colleagues responded by shooting him, wounding the attacker, whose motives were not immediately known, according to a police source.
France is still under the state of emergency imposed after the November 2015 attacks in Paris, when Islamic State jihadists killed 130 people in a night of carnage at venues across the city.
On Tuesday, a 40-year-old Algerian had threatened police officers with a hammer and refused to stop. Meantime, it was frightening for the 600 people inside Notre Dame Cathedral.
In April, an attacker opened fire on a police van on the Champs Elysees, killing one and seriously injuring two others.
Interior minister Gerard Collomb says a special security meeting convened by French president Emmanuel Macron will examine new counterterrorism measures Wednesday at the Elysee palace.
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The attack was an "isolated act", he said. "We were trying to figure out what was going on", he said.
Notre Dame, which is situated on the banks of the Seine river in the heart of Paris, draws 13 million visitors a year.
Paris law enforcement are treating the incident as a terrorist attack.
Police found the video in a search of his rental residence in the northwestern Paris suburb of Cergy, a source with knowledge of the investigation told worldwide news agency AFP. Authorities then asked the public to stay away from the area during ongoing operations.
The assailant, later found to be also armed with kitchen knives, was brought down as he threatened passersby outside one of the French capital's busiest tourist attractions on Tuesday afternoon. "They weren't going to succumb to terror", she said.
In January 2015, two Islamist gunmen killed 17 people at the Paris office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
It was the latest of several attacks in France targeting security officers.
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