By Catherine Pepinster
The medieval cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris will re-open on Saturday following a five-year refurbishment after the massive fire of 15 April 2019 came close to destroying France’s great gothic masterpiece.
How big was the task?
The work is estimated to have cost €700 million (£580 million) and needed a workforce of 600.
Why is it called Notre Dame?
Notre Dame means Our Lady, a name often used by Roman Catholics for Mary, the mother of Jesus.
And why has 7 December been chosen?
It is the eve of one of Mary’s greatest feasts — the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which refers to her being born without sin. The first mass in the restored Notre Dame, when its new altar will be blessed, will take place on the feast on Sunday, 8 December, and the public can then visit the cathedral.
How was the money raised?
The fire was so intense that the building was almost lost. The extent of the damage triggered such an outpouring of affection for the cathedral that donations amounted to €846 million, some from wealthy individuals as well as small amounts from ordinary members of the public. A surplus of €140 million will be used in the next three years for further restoration — of the façades, the roof of the sacristy, as well as the flying buttresses and the choir.
How did it catch fire?
The fire began during renovation work in the cathedral and it was probably caused by a worker’s cigarette or an electrical fault. It started in or near the spire and then quickly spread east, then raged west through the roof.
It destroyed the medieval roof timbers, the roof over the transept and the nave but stone vaulting survived. As people gathered in Paris that night, watching Notre Dame burn, a great cry went up from the crowd as the spire fell, crashing through the roof. Inside, the cathedral was badly damaged by falling masonry, water, and burning wood.
Four hundred firefighters fought the flames, which were finally extinguished the next morning.
What was saved?
The firefighters managed to save the bells. If they had fallen, they could have brought down the cathedral tower and much of the structure. Notre Dame’s famed stained glass rose windows all survived, as did the cathedral’s many statues and a gold cross above the altar.
The most precious thing to survive?
The relic called the Crown of Thorns. The crown is mentioned in the Gospels as being placed on the head of Jesus to mock him before his crucifixion. The crown was acquired by King Louis IX in 1238 and had several homes until it came to Notre Dame. It will now be presented to the public at Notre Dame on every first Friday of the month from the cathedral’s reopening until June 2025.
Other artefacts that escaped destruction?
Sixteen massive copper statues of the apostles and evangelists, which surrounded the spire, had been taken down for renovation four days before the fire. The 14th-century statue in the choir known as the Virgin of the Pillar narrowly avoided being crushed by falling masonry.
Who was responsible for the restoration?
The French state owns the country’s cathedrals so ultimately it was down to Emmanuel Macron, the Jesuit-educated president, to ensure Notre Dame was restored. He in turn assigned General Jean-Louis Georgelin, a formidable former chief of the defence staff, to run the project. Georgelin, however, did not live to see it completed: he died in an accident in the Pyrenees last summer.
What about the workforce?
About 600 craftspeople worked on the project, among them carpenters and stonemasons following in the footsteps of their medieval forebears, and adopting some of their habits, such as carving their names or a prayer into the wood and stone.
Was there full agreement on what should happen?
No. Although President Macron pledged that Notre Dame would be restored within five years and would be even more beautiful than before — plus belle encore — he did flirt with the idea of an architectural competition for a new spire and modern interior, a concept that won favour from some cathedral clergy who regard Notre Dame as a living thing, not a museum.
The conservation lobby, however, triumphed. When the chief architects of France’s historical monuments presented their plans to restore it to Notre Dame’s last complete, coherent state, they were unanimously approved by France’s National Commission for Heritage and Architecture. The last complete, coherent state referred to not so much the original medieval cathedral but to the previous 19th-century restoration, conducted by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.
Is there anything noticeably modern?
There is a new reliquary for the Crown of Thorns, designed by artist Sylvain Dubuisson, and a new baptismal font and altar, both in bronze, designed by Guillaume Bardet.
A new gilded cockerel has been put on the top of the spire to replace the one that fell in the blaze. Inside the cockerel are some holy relics, including a thorn from the Crown of Thorns, relics of two saints, and a parchment with the names of 2,000 people involved in the restoration.
Some of the stone is a replacement and sourced from the same region of France as the original: fossils in the cathedral’s stone helped to determine its origin. All the wood in the roof is new — the original medieval timbers were destroyed — and 1,200 oaks were needed, hand-hewn as the original timbers were 800 years ago.
Some of the gargoyles had to be replaced after the fire while the rest were repaired, some of them ravaged by the pollution of many years.
In a way, Notre Dame has benefited?
It has led to a clean-up that had not been attempted for generations. But the greatest bonus is probably the opportunity for archaeologists, who were able to study huge numbers of bones buried beneath the building; they also discovered the 13th-century stone rood screen, taken down in the 18th century, which has colourful depictions of the life of Christ.
The restoration not only cleaned away the residue from the firefighting but also the soot and grime of centuries. Notre Dame is now bright space, no longer the half-twilight people have known until now.
What will happen on 7 December?
President Macron has already shown television cameras around the restored cathedral — a moment he took to heap praise on the craftspeople who have brought Notre Dame back to life, telling them they “turned charred coals into art”.
But on Saturday comes the official opening ceremony to mark the cathedral’s restoration.
It will begin at dusk on Saturday with the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, knocking three times on the door of the church with his crozier. From within, the cathedral’s choir will be heard singing Psalm 122 with its verse: “I rejoiced with those who said unto me: Let us go to the house of the Lord.” At the third knock, the door will swing open.
There will be Scripture readings and the Magnificat — the words of the Virgin Mary — will be sung in celebration, just as it was on 26 August, 1944, to mark the liberation of Paris from German occupation.
This will be followed by benediction and a Te Deum, a traditional Catholic prayer of thanksgiving.
Who will be the guests?
Macron will be there, to be sure, but not the French prime minister. Michel Barnier was ousted on Wednesday with parties of the right and left uniting to kick him out after he tried to push through his budget without a vote. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, will attend as will Donald Trump, the US president-elect. The fire happened during his presidency.
The puzzling absence, though, is Pope Francis, who was invited but will remain in Rome for a consistory, or installation, of new cardinals on Saturday, and his traditional visit to the Spanish Steps in Rome on Sunday when he will lay a wreath at the nearby column of the Immaculate Conception.
Then he will travel to France — but to the island of Corsica, on 15 December, to attend a conference on the popular piety of the Mediterranean. Popular piety is one of Francis’s favourite topics — he recently published an encyclical, or teaching document, on the Sacred Heart. But for Parisians, this feels like a snub.
How important is Notre Dame to Paris?
The almost visceral connection between the people of Paris and Notre Dame was evident when the fire took hold. People wept openly in the streets as they watched it burn.
It is a symbol of the city, known the world over, with its 12 million visitors annually, pre-fire, making it the most visited place in France. But the French are notoriously anti-clerical — perhaps a leftover from the revolution of 1789. In 1905 a law prohibited state funding of religion and enacted been a clear separation of church and state. However, churches built before 1905 are owned by city councils. So you could say Notre Dame is owned by the people of Paris: it is their church.
And are Parisians Catholics?
About 65 per cent of the whole population of France identifies as Catholic. But last year’s Trajectories and Origins survey (Téo 2), found that only a quarter of those between 18 and 59 identified as Catholic. Those with no religion, the “nones”, now make up 53 per cent of the population, while the number of people identifying as Muslim has risen to 11 per cent.
Notre Dame is now just a tourist spot?
Not as far as the Catholic church is concerned. The culture minister, Rachida Dati, recently proposed that visitors to the cathedral should pay €5 to enter. Dati wanted it to help to fund other churches. While an entrance fee is common in many Anglican cathedrals, it is anathema to Catholics, and the clergy said no.
Olivier Sache, the vice-rector of Notre Dame, recently told La Croix, the French Catholic paper: “Notre Dame is not a museum … but a place to reflect, to feel free and approach God”. That idealism does not mirror what Notre Dame was before the fire: it had plenty of stalls selling souvenirs in its state-owned aisles.
It also has a renowned choir that, together with its priests and organists, has been engaged in worship at the nearby Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, near the Louvre, for the past five years.
The cathedral’s celebrated organ has been repaired after fire damage.
After the great ceremonials, when can ordinary people visit again?
The first visitors will be allowed in on Sunday, 8 December. Then, a mass will be celebrated by Archbishop Ulrich, when he will bless the new altar. After that, a lunch will be held for the homeless of Paris — an event that would possibly be preferred by Pope Francis to the grand opening ceremony with high-ups the day before.
Was this the first calamity at Notre Dame?
The cathedral, first begun in 1163 and completed about 1260, suffered from desecration during the French Revolution, when much of its religious imagery was destroyed. It was rededicated in 1793 to the Cult of Reason and then to the Cult of the Supreme Being in 1794. At one time, the Goddess of Liberty replaced the Virgin Mary in the church. Napoleon Bonaparte restored it as a Catholic church in 1801, and held his coronation as emperor there in 1804.
The original medieval spire was taken down in the 18th century because it had been damaged and thought dangerous, and then a replacement — the one that burnt in the 2019 fire — was installed in 1859.
After publication of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1831, interest in the cathedral revived and it underwent restoration. Ever since, tourists have flocked to it, and if they have not seen Quasimodo, they have enjoyed its remarkable gargoyles high on the roof.
Who should have the last word on Notre Dame?
That goes to Kenneth Clark, the art historian and presenter of the BBC landmark series, Civilisation, in 1969.
“What is civilisation?”, Clark said to the camera, standing in front of Notre Dame. “I can’t define it in abstract terms, but I think I can recognise it when I see it.” He turned to face the cathedral. “I am looking at it now.”
