Restoring a Nation’s Identity — Notre Dame Restored Following Fire
By Millie Barker
The rose window in the northern arm of the transept undergoing restoration in 2021.
Image courtesy of The Art Newspaper and Yves Gallet, 2021.
On the evening of 15 April 2019, an enduring symbol of Paris was devastated by catastrophic fires. The next morning, as the embers still smoked, French President Emmanuel Macron promised to rebuild the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral. That promise was fulfilled on Saturday 7 December 2024 with a liturgical reopening ceremony, attended by significant donators and world leaders, including US President-Elect Donald Trump and Prince William.
Notre Dame Cathedral on fire on 15 April 2019, Paris.
Image courtesy of Fabien Barrau / AFP via Getty Images.
Chief Architect Phillipe Villeneuve, who headed the restoration programme, remained optimistic that this demandingly short timeline could be achieved. Villeneuve claimed that despite the need to rebuild the spire and roof structure, the primary damage was caused by lead pollution, after the lead roof melted, dispelling the myth that the Cathedral was close to collapse.
Undertaken by nearly 2,000 skilled workers, the Cathedral’s restoration has applied the same techniques and materials as in the thirteenth century. Furthermore, the restoration has provided invaluable insight into the methods of medieval stonecutters and carpenters. The professor leading a working group studying the cathedral, Yves Gallet, noted that the fire revealed the level of experimentation within the structure—the approximations and irregularities that compose the Cathedral regarded as the ‘epitome of perfection in Gothic architecture.’
The rebuilding has given a new understanding of the Cathedral, with the discovery of the remnants of a first century building below the Soufflot Crypt, extensive sculptural fragments, and the remains of over 100 burials. These are planned to be exhibited in a potential museum housed in the Hotel Dieu, the hospital to the immediate Northwest of the Cathedral.
The cleaned and restored nave of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris on 29 November 2024.
Image courtesy of Stephane de Sakutin / AFP - Getty Images.
The restoration hasn’t been without controversy, not least the tension between those who believed something new could be created and those who wanted it to be rebuilt exactly as it was. Whilst the latter perspective prevailed, the restoration is in fact a recreation of a modern reimagining of Medievalism. The distinctive spire and certain stained-glass windows lost to the fire were the new creation of Viollet-le-Duc’s remodelling of the Cathedral in the nineteenth century. Thus, whilst following techniques true to the thirteenth century, the restoration must be considered in terms of a modern ethic of restoration where what is now considered timeless and authentic, was originally a product of another era’s imagination.
Norte Dame encapsulates a tension between preserving the past and building the future, but this is nothing new. Since its century long construction, beginning in 1163, the Medieval Cathedral has been a site rich with controversy. It has embodied the tension between the secular and sacred throughout the Reformation and the French Revolution and can now even be tied to President Macron’s present political ambitions. At the reopening ceremony, Macron pronounced that ‘the Furnace of Notre Dame was a national scar and you [the French people] were its healing balm’—thus, encapsulating his hopes of the Cathedral as a symbol of endurance and unity.
Bibliography
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