It took Jean-Louis Bidet and his team of highly expert carpenters nearly two years to remodel 1,300 oak trees into the wood backbone of Notre-Dame.
Racing to revive the Paris cathedral that was nearly destroyed by a devastating fire in 2019, the carpenters used only axes and no modern tools to assemble and install the large wood frame that supports the roof, almost equivalent to the Thirteenth-century original.
“We did the whole lot by hand, as they’d have within the medieval era,” says Bidet, whose employer Ateliers Perrault specialises in restoring historic monuments.
Yet within the upper reaches of the gothic cathedral where the blaze originated, a layer of modernity has been placed atop the old. A state-of-the-art fire protection system was installed to safeguard the wood frame that’s generally known as la forêt (the forest), including heat-detecting video cameras and nozzles in a position to spray out a high-quality water mist.
“The technology is so significantly better today than the one in place on the night of the hearth,” says Eric Lazzari, an executive at DEF, which made the equipment.
This mix of tradition and innovation has infused the restoration of Notre-Dame, made possible with donations of around €840mn. Accomplished in only over five years, it has involved the work of some 2,000 staff, a lot of them from small businesses which have showcased French craftsmanship.
For a lot of in France, the value tag is value it to resurrect a gothic masterpiece that has been a backdrop for key moments within the nation’s history: looted through the French Revolution, it was the coronation place of Napoleon I and where Charles de Gaulle was mourned.
“Notre-Dame is a polyphonic monument, meaning it tells a mess of stories from our shared history,” says Jérémie Patrier-Leitus, a member of parliament from northern France who from 2019 to 2022 worked at the general public agency charged with repairing the cathedral. “Each time the French want to search out unity again, they arrive together in Notre-Dame.”
That will probably be the hope at grand reopening festivities this weekend hosted by President Emmanuel Macron and attended by dignitaries including Donald Trump and Prince William. The Archbishop of Paris will formally begin proceedings on Saturday by rapping his staff on the shuttered doors of the cathedral, bidding them to open. On Sunday morning, a mass will probably be held to mark the tragedy that touched people across the country and the world.
Yet this moment of accord comes at a time of deep political division and distrust in France. The country’s minority government collapsed on Wednesday amid contention over a proposed deficit-cutting budget. At the identical time, labour unions are preparing for a winter of fresh strike motion and protest against public sector job cuts.
Against this, the story of Notre-Dame’s reconstruction is one among unlikely partnerships, some unprecedented in France: between the state and billionaire donors, between bureaucrats and labourers, and despite sometimes bitter clashes of vision.
To the surprise of some, this national project has successfully fixed not only what was damaged by the hearth, but in addition granted Notre-Dame a brand new lease of life. Given the dilapidated state of the cathedral and lack of resources, in some ways the hearth was a “blessing in disguise”, says Philippe Villeneuve, the chief architect of Notre-Dame since 2013.
Before the hearth, the state had planned a €150mn, multiyear renovation, but funding had not been guaranteed. Gaping holes and cracks had marred the lead roofing; damaged gargoyles that channel water run-off had been replaced with plastic pipes; rust encrusted the spire.
“Before the hearth, we’d principally given up on restoring the interiors, provided that it might just touch off a spiral of spending, and were slowly addressing only probably the most critical parts of the outside,” Villeneuve tells the Financial Times. “But with the donations, we were in a position to undertake a comprehensive restoration programme. I never imagined for a second that we’d go this far.”
Although the precise cause of the blaze on April 15 2019 stays unknown, it began out of sight within the wood frame above the vaulted stone ceilings. It then spread across all the roof, causing the Nineteenth-century spire to collapse and fall through the stone vaulted ceiling into the nave.
Disastrous because it was, the hearth might need been worse. If the pair of bell towers on the front of the cathedral had collapsed, it could have brought down much of the intricately carved facade. Many priceless artefacts were spared, including the round stained glass windows generally known as les roses, dating from the Middle ages.
But the extraordinary heat had caused a high-quality cloud of lead dust to settle all around the interior, which meant that even elements left undamaged by the hearth would wish restorative work.
The morning after the blaze, Macron declared in a televised address that the cathedral can be fixed inside five years. Many considered it a rash promise, with little information yet available on how gravely the structure had been damaged.
“French women, French men, and all of you foreigners who love France and love Paris, I would like to let you know tonight that I share your sorrow, but I also share your hope. We now have work to do,” said the president.
Contributions of all sizes flowed in from 340,000 people in 150 countries, but most of the price has been met by a few of France’s wealthiest families — an unusual move in a rustic where philanthropy is rarer than within the US and the state is liable for financing the upkeep of non secular monuments.
The Pinault family behind the posh group Kering moved first, pledging €100mn, followed by their rivals, the Arnault family that controls LVMH, who promised €200mn. The muse of the Bettencourt clan, whose fortune comes from cosmetics maker L’Oréal, matched the €200mn. Paired with one other €100mn from French oil company Total, the largest donors contributed greater than two-thirds of the restoration budget.
The architect
When Philippe Villeneuve first stepped into the cathedral the morning after the hearth in 2019 he felt sadness and bewilderment. “Then . . . I put aside the emotions and have become the architect who must reserve it,” says the civil servant who has been answerable for the cathedral since 2013. In the next days, he drafted a plan for how you can stabilise the damaged cathedral, clean out the piles of charred debris, and start painstaking restoration work — all of the while working against the clock. Now that it’s finished, Villeneuve says he feels a way of “collective pride” for what the teams have achieved. “When people come into Notre-Dame for the primary time, it’s going to take their breath away,” he predicts.
Some on the left in France were suspicious of the families’ intentions, with one union boss slamming the powerful CEOs who were quick to offer to Notre-Dame, yet refused to lift wages for their very own staff. To counter the thought their donations were self-interested, two of the families renounced the tax advantages they were due for the donations.
It didn’t buy them influence either. The state was firmly in the driving force’s seat and the donors were neither granted any governance powers nor consulted on major decisions.
In the times after the hearth, Macron made the choice to create an ad hoc state entity to perform the restoration, in effect relegating the donors to a marginal role.
Reporting on to the Élysée Palace and the culture ministry, the brand new agency was granted powers to sidestep bureaucracy, streamlining decision-making and contracting to fulfill the five-year deadline.
To guide it, Macron chosen a retired general, Jean-Louis Georgelin, with no experience in historic preservation, betting that the gruff military man would blast through red tape and motivate the military raised to work on the restoration.
The agency did create a committee which met usually to maintain donors informed about how their money was being spent, but disclosure was relatively limited.
Guillaume Poitrinal, a former real estate CEO and president of the Fondation du Patrimoine, which collected funds in a job just like Britain’s National Trust, says he would have liked to see the donors take a more lively role.
The image restorer
The intricate painted murals within the chapels behind the altar of Notre-Dame weren’t touched by the flames, but smoke darkened their already grimy surface. Marie Parant, an experienced mural restorer, recruited a forged of dozens to fastidiously strip away the layers of soot and dirt from the Nineteenth-century murals created by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Perched on scaffolding to succeed in the four-storey high murals, they applied gels and solvents with brushes to revive the colors. “We never touch the unique painting, only clean it, and nothing is added,” she explains. “All the things you see is the unique just having been revealed again.”
“We had no word to say on the project’s selections, budgets, or management,” he says. Although the work has been carried out “very well”, Poitrinal says “things might have been done in another way” to set a precedent for personal donors helping with the maintenance of French architectural heritage — something he says is sorely needed at a time of tight government budgets and wide deficits.
In France, the state or local governments are liable for the maintenance of all religious buildings built before 1905, under a law passed that yr to make sure the separation of church and state. Buildings are leased totally free and in perpetuity to the Catholic Church to make use of for worship, while the dioceses are in a position to design and maintain the interiors.
Yet the state simply doesn’t have the means to maintain up with repairs, provided that some 5,000 churches in France are estimated to wish work and a whole bunch are closed for safety reasons, in response to foundation estimates.
Upending long-held French habits, the experience of Notre-Dame has now opened the door to the mobilisation of personal money to pay for this sort of work.
Macron’s government recently suggested one other proposal to assist pay for maintenance of French religious heritage: charging an entrance fee to the thousands and thousands of tourists who visit Notre-Dame annually, as do other world-famous churches like St Paul’s Cathedral in London and la Sagrada Família in Barcelona.
The church immediately rejected the thought of a €5 fee, insisting it was vital to maintain Notre-Dame open to all. “Now will not be the time to have this debate,” says an Elysée official, suggesting the thought could return to the table later.
No project of the size and visibility of the Notre-Dame renovation was ever going to be resistant to infighting at a time of discord and disunity.
Macron, an increasingly polarising figure, opened up a debate only days after the hearth over whether a touch of modernity must be incorporated into the cathedral through the restoration, in order to mark the hearth for future generations.
His government declared that France would host an architectural competition to make your mind up how you can replace the destroyed spire of Notre-Dame, opening the door to it being reimagined in addition to rebuilt.
Wild, speculative designs proliferated online: the British architect Norman Foster proposed a wholly glass roof just like the one he gave to Berlin’s Reichstag, capped with a brand new spire fabricated from glass and steel complete with a viewing platform.
Vincent Callebaut, a French architect known for pioneering green designs, pitched the thought of putting in a greenhouse to grow vegetables under a rounded glass roof, paired with solar panels to power the cathedral’s electricity.
Traditionalists howled online under the hashtag #touchepasànotredame. France’s civil servant architects, whose mission it’s to guard cultural and non secular heritage, argued for rebuilding the spire just because the Nineteenth-century architect and restorer Eugène Viollet-le-Duc had designed it.
The master carpenter
The fondest memory that master carpenter Jean-Louis Bidet has of the project he led to rebuild Notre-Dame’s Thirteenth-century wood frame took place in a forest. He and a team from Ateliers Perrault had to pick 1,300 oak trees to duplicate the unique structure before the hearth. The trunks needed to be a certain size, quite straight, and the suitable color, so it took months of wandering the woodland to search out all of them. “Some days, you choose out five trees, one other day you may find 20,” he recalls. His team of some 50 carpenters used a 3D map of the unique frame to remodel the trees into the precise shape and specifications. Sections were assembled within the Loire region before they were transported to Paris and hoisted into place. “It took an incredible amount of energy but we’re really happy with the result,” he says.
Macron fell within the modernisers’ camp as a longtime fan of latest art, visible in his selections within the Elysée palace, where he had placed works by abstract painter Pierre Soulages and conceptual artist Daniel Buren.
France also has a record of undertaking modernisations of its landmarks, the most effective known of which was the addition of IM Pei’s glass pyramid to the courtyards of the Louvre museum, which initially generated controversy but is now adored.
Yet whatever the president’s tastes, architects who work for state heritage agencies really helpful in 2020 that Notre-Dame be rebuilt because it was before the hearth.
Villeneuve, the cathedral’s architect, underlines that such an approach is the rule in restoration of major historical monuments in the event that they are damaged, as called for under international accords to which France is a signatory.
“Our role is to try to revive and to preserve, not engage in creation, and within the case of Notre-Dame, we’ve the archives, techniques, and the materials to achieve this,” he says. “This will not be a lazy or conservative selection, it’s a principled one based on absolute respect for the monument.”
The National Commission for Heritage and Architecture (CNPA), an independent panel that advises the French government on projects affecting historical monuments, backed that stance unanimously in July 2020. Macron acquiesced — there can be no latest spire.
But soon enough the modernisers and traditionalists were again fighting over one other idea floated by Macron, namely replacing a series of stained glass windows installed by Viollet-le-Duc with latest figurative ones to be designed by contemporary artists.
The proposal shocked conservationists since the windows didn’t break through the fire, and had been fastidiously cleaned during restoration works, using donors’ money.
“The CNPA spent a number of time and energy convincing Macron that he was fallacious to want to switch the spire with something modern, and once he ceded that time, the controversy shifted to the windows,” says Alexandre Gady, a Sorbonne professor who specialises in historical preservation and is a member of the advisory panel. “That is akin to an act of the prince; it is evident Macron wants to go away his mark on Notre-Dame.”
Within the Elysée, they keep off at such criticism, saying it is sensible to memorialise the hearth for future generations. “Notre-Dame is a palimpsest: every period adds its touches,” an official says. The unique Viollet-le-Duc windows is not going to be hidden away in some basement, they add, and can be placed in a future museum to be built near the cathedral.
After reviewing submissions from several artists, including Buren who’s seen to have the president’s favour, a range is anticipated in January.
Yet in July the CNPA voted unanimously against the brand new stained glass window project. Gady says associations that advocate for cultural heritage are planning to file administrative complaints to attempt to stop the project. “This fight will not be over,” he adds.
Such acrimony will hopefully be put aside this week to have fun the reopening.
The unprecedented efforts by the artisans who worked on the edifice took centre stage on November 29 when Macron and his wife Brigitte, guided by the Archbishop of Paris Laurent Ulrich and Notre-Dame Rector Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, admired the interiors.
Some 1,200 staff and artists — carpenters, stonemasons, master glassmakers, painting restorers, specialists who cleaned the grand organ, crane operators, technicians who dangled from heights using ropes — showed as much as admire the fruits of their labour.
The organ specialist
At almost 13 metres tall, the organ in Notre-Dame is one among the largest on the planet. The fireplace had left its 8,000 metal pipes covered in lead dust, so all the instrument needed to be dismantled and removed for cleansing — a job that ended up taking Olivier Chevron’s company Atelier Cattiaux greater than two years. “The organ is so big, it has very narrow staircases and hallways inside it identical to a constructing,” says Chevron, pictured above right with organ tuner Thomas Ville. The 57-year-old had already worked on a primary restoration of the identical organ as a young apprentice some 30 years ago, so felt a way of duty to come back to the help of the instrument. “I felt all of us needed to do our greatest work since the world was watching Notre-Dame,” he says.
Macron took a victory lap himself while thanking the artisans, rebuking those that criticised as “crazy” and “unimaginable” his pledge to reopen in five years. “The blaze at Notre-Dame was a national wound, and you have got been its treatment, through determination, through work, through commitment,” he said. “You have got transformed ashes into art.”
On Sunday, the primary mass because the fire will probably be held at Notre-Dame, an extended awaited moment for the faithful. Ribadeau Dumas tells the FT that extra services were being added and hours for prayer prolonged, while other steps, reminiscent of a brand new online reservation system, had been taken to make sure the cathedral could handle the 15mn visitors expected annually.
“People will see that the renovation is easy, good and really beautiful,” says Ribadeau Dumas. “These living stones were built 860 years ago to welcome believers and for them, and others, to search out peace.”
The very last thing visitors exiting the brand new Notre-Dame will see is a brand new message that Ribadeau Dumas asked to be inscribed over the nice wood doors: “Peace be with you.”
Graphic illustration by Ian Bott and Bob Haslett
