[en] Highlights: • In-situ observation made on cement paste suggested that the stress application changed the development of microstructure. • The cement grains dissolved faster under stress. • The accelerated reactions under load resulted in increase in stiffness and deformation of the samples. While the stress-induced dissolution of various minerals has gained attention as an important time-dependent deformation mechanism, this has only sparingly been investigated in portland cement systems. In this paper, X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT) is used to make direct observations of the microstructural evolution in cement paste samples under different levels of stress during their first 60 h of hydration. Stiffness and creep measurements are also made while imaging the changes in the microstructure. The results show that stress applied at ages between 24 h and 60 h caused an increase in stiffness, increase in early age creep, and a statistically higher amount of dissolution of individual particles near the point of load application.