{"id":3259462,"date":"2024-12-03T12:54:47","date_gmt":"2024-12-03T17:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/?p=3259462"},"modified":"2024-12-03T12:54:47","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T17:54:47","slug":"notre-dame-reconstruction-reopening-3259462","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/notre-dame-reconstruction-reopening-3259462\/","title":{"rendered":"What you should know about Notre Dame’s restoration"},"content":{"rendered":"
Experts have answers for you about the history of the Notre Dame cathedral and the efforts to restore it following the 2019 fire.<\/p>\n
On April 15, 2019, millions watched in horror as a devastating fire engulfed the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, toppling the spire and destroying the wooden roof, along with heavy damage to the cathedral’s upper walls and vaults.<\/p>\n
On December 7 and 8, five years since that blaze, the cathedral will open its doors to visitors. French President Emmanuel Macron\u2014who had promised that the rebuilding effort would be done in five years\u2014will preside over its opening, and Archbishop of Paris Laurent Ulrich will strike the doors of the cathedral with his staff and officially reopen the 861-year-old Gothic landmark.<\/p>\n
Logan Connors<\/a>, professor and chair of the modern languages and literatures department at the University of Miami, watched the fire in disbelief along the Seine River, together with a group of students on a UParis study abroad program.<\/p>\n “The cathedral has played an outsized role in determining Paris’ identity,” he says. “It is very old, from the 12th century, and it has been a sight visited by millions from outside of Paris. The fire was just a tremendous event, and the thought that it may not exist was just unimaginable.”<\/p>\n Notre Dame will come back to its former glory thanks to a meticulous, coordinated rebuilding effort by Reb\u00e2tir Notre-Dame de Paris and at a cost of $928 million. The effort brought together about 1,000 artisans from several countries, including the United States, to rebuild what was lost to the fire. These included master carpenters, engineers, glassmakers<\/a>, stonemasons, sculptors, artists, and organ builders.<\/p>\n “These are highly specialized architects at the highest level of their skill, and in order to be one of those architects, you have to go through a gruesome education process,” says Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lejeune<\/a>, professor at the School of Architecture.<\/p>\n “They become architects of the national monuments of France. In the European context, the architects of the monuments of France are the best trained in the world.”<\/p>\n Those architects, as well as the artisans working on the cathedral, have extensive knowledge of Gothic cathedrals. Notre Dame is one of the best examples of that medieval style, which features flying buttresses, large windows, stone walls, slender columns, and ribbed vaults.<\/p>\n “When Notre Dame was built, they decided on a Gothic style because it was a new idea, and it allowed for large windows that not only tell stories but also allow for more light,” says Lejeune. “The challenge for the architect was to create a nave that would go very high, almost as if going to the sky, going to God.”<\/p>\n That challenge was met by building a nave that was made of strong stones and using the buttresses as support crutches as well as stone pillars to support the vaults, he says. To protect the nave, a sturdy wooden roof was created from mature oak trees from nearby forests.<\/p>\n In the fire, those features helped to mitigate the damage<\/a> to some degree, says Lejeune.<\/p>\n “In the fire, the 19th-century neo-Gothic spire that capped at 300 feet collapsed on top of the vault, but most of the vault resisted even though some sections fell to the ground in the nave,” says Lejeune. He says that it was the strong craftsmanship of the original stonemasons and carpenters that caused that.<\/p>\n The rebuilding effort aimed to mostly recreate Notre Dame using the same methods as in medieval times, since they have proven so resilient. The carpenters returned to the surrounding woods around Paris to find oak trees more than 100 years old to rebuild the roof, says Lejeune.<\/p>\n