Five years after it was gutted by fire, the Cathedral is more beautiful than ever
“If this monument is one day finished,” wrote Robert de Thorigny, a 12th-century Norman monk, of Notre Dame cathedral, “no other will ever compare.” The gothic edifice on an island in the historic heart of Paris is perhaps not unique. But it touches people—the spiritual and the secular, French and non-French—in unusually powerful ways. It is a place of worship, a testament to human ingenuity and a symbol of resilience. When on the evening of April 15th 2019 flames engulfed its timbered roof and toppled its spire, the shock and sorrow were global.
Today Notre Dame has been rebuilt. The archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, will ceremonially open its doors for the first time since the fire on December 7th, and hold the first mass the next day. Against the odds, France has stuck to the five-year timetable set by President Emmanuel Macron. On a final pre-opening visit on November 29th to what he called the “building project of the century”, Mr Macron brought cameras inside to reveal the restored interior for the first time.
Perhaps the most breathtaking feature is the cathedral’s newly luminous quality. After being darkened by centuries of grime, the blanched stonework of the pillars and vaults now appears as it would have done in medieval times. The pristine aspect of the stone—cleaned, consolidated, recut and replaced—will doubtless take by surprise visitors expecting to find the pillars rising “majestically into the gloom”, as Victor Hugo wrote of them in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. So might the bright pigment of the restored 19th-century chapel wall paintings, not to mention the modern liturgical furnishings in dark bronze. When the cathedral opens for mass, the congregation will be seated on 1,500 modern solid-oak seats. The clergy will be dressed in newly-designed contemporary ecclesiastical robes for the opening and until Pentecost next year.
The restoration of Notre Dame is remarkable in other ways, too. The rebuilding work scrupulously respects both the cathedral’s original design and its construction techniques. Sculptors and stonemasons worked with chisels and brushes to restore gargoyles and chimeras. Craftsmen used hand-forged axes to hew oak logs into square beams. Wooden dowel pegs hold the roof trusses together without metal pieces. The spire is a faithful reconstruction of the 19th-century version designed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, which the flames destroyed. The project, involving over 2,000 workers and 250 firms, many of them small family businesses, has been a showcase for French craftsmanship. “You have transformed ashes into art,” Mr Macron told the artisans present during his tour.
The cathedral belongs to the French secular state. Yet its rebuilding has been carried out with almost no contribution from the public purse. This is thanks in part to the generosity of France’s richest businessmen, including two luxury-goods magnates, Bernard Arnault (head of LVMH) and François Pinault (founder of Kering). But hundreds of thousands of smaller donations have also flowed in, from France and around the world. Notre Dame, which had struggled before the fire to raise funds for restoration, collected a total of nearly €900m ($950m) in contributions.
The restored cathedral will have its detractors. Traditionalists will bristle at the touch of modernity. Modernists will regret the lack of a bold contemporary architectural statement. Purists will say it has been “over-restored”. But the quality and craftsmanship are hard to fault. “This is not a monument like any other,” Philippe Jost, who runs the public body in charge of the restoration, told The Economist earlier this year: “We are restoring a cathedral that is 860 years old so that it can last for at least another 860 years.”
The Economist
