The Miracle of Notre Dame’s Restoration
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Something big is happening in Paris at the end of this year. All minds are currently on the Olympic Games, but in December pictures will fly around the world of another event of huge significance. The newly restored cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, will reopen, just over five years after its near destruction by fire. And what miracles will have been achieved to arrive at that point.
Every French citizen and every Francophile will remember April 15th, 2019, when fire engulfed the cathedral and the spire toppled. In that moment it felt as if France’s precious heritage was disappearing, for Notre Dame was both a masterpiece of gothic architecture and the country’s most revered religious building, the place where such precious relics as the Crown of Thorns were kept. The cathedral was also the setting for some of the key moments in France’s history. It was to Notre Dame that Napoleon summoned the pope to crown him as Emperor in 1804. It was also there, in August 1944, that Général de Gaulle attended a Te Deum in thanksgiving for the Liberation of Paris, even as the last bullets were being fired across the city.
Thankfully, the Crown of Thorns and many precious artworks survived the fire, but the cathedral itself was left in a parlous state, despite the heroic efforts of the city’s Fire Brigade. The spire was gone and the roof was more or less destroyed. The very next day President Emmanuel Macron announced that rebuilding would begin straight away and pledged to have it finished in five years. An immediate appeal for funds was launched and contributions from the public and from over 150 countries flooded in. The challenge was enormous, but the president was emphatic. Notre Dame would be repaired and as soon as possible. The skeptics thought it couldn’t be done, but all agreed that it had to be tried. Paris without Notre Dame was unthinkable.
It was not the first time the cathedral’s existence had been threatened. During the French Revolution, Notre Dame was vandalized, many of the statues destroyed and precious metal treasures melted down. In the early 18th century, the medieval spire was deemed so at risk of collapsing that it was dismantled. The publication in 1831 of Victor Hugo’s novel, Notre Dame de Paris, known in English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, was a turning point. The story was set in the Middle Ages when the cathedral was at the height of its splendor and Hugo’s readers began to realize how badly it needed to be restored. A petition was launched, King Louis-Philippe commissioned the architect Viollet-le-Duc to oversee the project, and it was at this time that the new spire, the one so familiar to Parisians until the fire of 2019, was erected.
The scale of the task left by the fire was enormous. The National Commission for Heritage and Architecture’s ruling in the summer of 2020 made it plain that not only should materials just like the originals be used, but also that as far as possible the restoration work should be carried out using the original building techniques, whether they dated from the Middle Ages or the 19th century. Everything was to be restored to its pre-fire condition which meant repairing many very different elements, from the 13th roof framework to marble sculptures added during the reign of Louis XIV, as well as Viollet-le-Duc’s 19th-century spire and even the 54 gargoyles he added in his own imagined version of what medieval artists might have installed!
The first task, that of making the site safe, took two whole years. Not until the summer of 2021 was the work of stabilizing the building complete. An army of specialist workers took precious works of art to safety, removed crumbling parts of the building and shored up damaged gables and pillars. The spire was undergoing restoration work at the time of the fire and the task of removing the melted scaffolding which had surrounded it was particularly exacting. It took months for a team of scaffolders, using an 80-meter crane – said to be the biggest in Europe – to untangle the web of melted metal which weighed 200 tons. This “Safety Phase” alone cost 165 million euros.
Finally, the restoration proper could begin. The forests of northern France were scoured for the 1000 oak trees needed to rebuild the roof framework. Historians and archivists were engaged and original planning documents sourced, both those of the original medieval designers and Viollet-le-Duc’s. A huge team of forestry experts, lumberjacks, architects, engineers and carpenters was needed to build the cathedral’s wooden framework and when they had done their part, specialist masons and roofers took over. The ceremony, in January 2024, when the youngest carpenter placed a bouquet on top of the cathedral’s choir frame, marked the moment when this crucial phase was finally complete.
Meanwhile, work continued on many other aspects of the restoration, involving an army of different specialist craftsmen – gilders, cabinetmakers and picture restorers to name just a few – some working on site inside Notre Dame and others in workshops all over France. Stonemasons had the mammoth task of repairing the damage done both by the fire itself and by the water used to put it out. Some of the gargoyles were so badly damaged that they had to be entirely re-sculpted, a meticulous process beginning with plaster models which were validated by architectural historians before work began on the new pieces.
Fortunately, the cathedral’s stained-glass windows survived the fire largely undamaged, but they were put into safe storage while the restoration work was done. As they were suffering from the effects of time – dust, lead and smoke damage and general wear and tear – the chance was taken to have them deep cleaned and restored. The religious images created by medieval craftsmen to convey the bible’s stories to a largely illiterate population will return, say the cathedral authorities, with “a luminosity which had been lost.” So, we can look forward to seeing such pieces as the glorious north rose window, still containing most of the original glass from the 13th century, shining with a new vibrancy. Its beautiful blue tones contrast with the mainly pinks of the south rose window, gifted to Notre Dame by King Louis IX in about 1250 and depicting Mary holding the Christ Child.
Notre Dame’s restoration has certainly proved to be a logistical triumph. At points more than a thousand workers were engaged on the project, on site and in 150 specialist workshops and companies all over the country. So many of the tasks have required craftsmen with excellent skills and an understanding of techniques which are, in some cases, centuries old. The 21st-century carpenters have used hand-held axes to create beams from oak planks, just as their medieval predecessors did. Organizations like Charpentiers sans Frontières (Carpenters Without Borders) have been crucial, seeking out the highly specialized workmen required from all over France and beyond.
As the project nears completion, it’s becoming clear that it has created an understanding across the centuries. The past has been mined to inform the present and today’s workers have gained a new respect for the work done by their forbears. Loïc Desmonts, in charge of one of the carpentry workshops which prepared the beams, puts it like this: “It makes you think the intelligence we have now is not the same as what they had. They were as smart as us, but in a different way.” There’s a modesty about many of the workers, who see their work as just part of a long continuum: ‘The workers of old did their part, others will follow after us,” as one puts it.
All of these efforts will come to fruition at the end of this year, with a prayer vigil on December 7th and the consecration of the altar on the following day. Normal opening hours are scheduled to resume on December 16th. The cathedral, well into its ninth century, will resume its rightful place right in the center of Paris and as the spiritual heart of the nation. Before the devastating fire, some 12 million people visited Notre Dame each year. There will surely be a global audience many times that watching as Notre Dame is re-opened, bringing reminders of the city’s rich past and an assurance of continuity into the future.
DETAILS
The exhibition “From Builders to Restorers,” currently running at the Cité de l’Architecture through the summer, tells the story of Notre Dame’s original construction alongside that of its restoration after the fire through artifacts, models, drawings and photographs.
Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine
1 Place du Trocadéro et du 11 Novembre, 16th arrondissement
Nearest Metro: Trocadéro
Entry 9€ (includes entry to the rest of the museum)
Concessions 8€
Lead photo credit : View of Notre Dame. Photo: John Eigenauer
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