The Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris is a treasure. Initially built in the 13th century, it came to be recognised and celebrated all-around the planet as a primary instance of medieval architecture and engineering. In France, it is occasionally known as “the people’s palace,” simply because it has been the site of not just worship, but also national consolation and reconciliation for centuries.
As retired French army Typical Jean-Louis Georgelin set it to 60 Minutes correspondent Monthly bill Whitaker: “The Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris is, in some way, the coronary heart of France. For the Catholic, of study course, for the Christian, but for every person. … All the terrific situations of France, in some way or one more, took put listed here in the cathedral.”
When Notre Dame caught fire on April 15, 2019, it was a tragedy and a trauma shared by men and women all more than the planet. Simply because images of the hearth ended up broadcast are living to televisions and smartphones almost everywhere, it was a person of people 21st century moments that the globe expert in true time.
“Every person stopped,” Georgelin reported, describing what went on in his dwelling place. “And a ton of men and women in France cried for the reason that they come to feel that anything quite deep in the soul of France and the spirit of France was about to collapse.”
The cathedral’s legendary 200-foot-tall picket spire did collapse that could be the instant people bear in mind most from that evening. Journalist and writer Agnes Poirier, who life just across the River Seine from Notre Dame, remembers standing with her neighbors and watching it drop.
“I recall the scream of the group declaring, ‘No!’ as if they couldn’t conceive these a point,” Poirier stated.
Only a heroic work by the Paris fire brigade prevented the rest of Notre Dame from collapsing. By the time firefighters arrived, the cathedral’s picket roof and spire were outside of preserving, so they concentrated on preventing fires burning inside the stone towers that are important to Notre Dame’s structural integrity.
“There ended up like 15 or 20 minutes to save Notre Dame,” Poirier reported. “And they did it.”
The whole extent of hurt became distinct on the early morning after the fireplace: the roof and spire have been totally long gone, there were two big holes exactly where the collapsing spire crashed via the stone vaults of Notre Dame’s ceiling, and the cathedral’s flooring was coated with deep piles of burned wooden and broken stone.
French President Emmanuel Macron pledged just following the fire that Notre Dame would be repaired and reopened in just 5 a long time. He appointed Georgelin to oversee the huge restoration project.
The other essential determine in the job is Philippe Villeneuve, who has been the main architect in demand of the cathedral for a decade. He is so devoted to Notre Dame that he has its famed spire tattooed on his arm.
“They say that I have Notre Dame in my pores and skin,” he mentioned in French. “It truly is pretty functional, simply because when I have to reveal how the spire fell, it can be often far better to demonstrate that from here to there it tipped over, and from there to there it fell.”
Villeneuve was supervising a restoration challenge focused on the spire at the time the hearth broke out in April 2019.
Whitaker requested him a pointed concern: “Did your restoration task have just about anything to do with the fireplace breaking out?”
“An investigation is continue to underway,” Villeneuve responded in French. “No trigger of the fireplace has been identified. But individually, it is unbearable. This fireplace in no way should have took place, and it did. inevitably, I feel accountable,” he mentioned before switching to English. “In actuality, I’m totally wrecked. I so want to rebuild Notre Dame, it really is for the reason that I want to rebuild myself.”
Just prior to the four-yr anniversary of the hearth, Villeneuve and Georgelin gave Whitaker and his 60 Minutes colleagues unusual entry to each and every component of the huge restoration and reconstruction venture at Notre Dame.
Just about $1 billion in private donations have been pledged to rebuild Notre Dame, most of it from France. Around $50 million has appear from People in america.
That revenue will be applied to reconstruct the cathedral as it was, although architects all over the entire world floated a number of redesign concepts. In the end, President Macron and a special committee agreed to rebuild Notre Dame just as it experienced been, and with the same materials: stone, wood and direct.
“An historic monument, a cathedral, is not something to be performed with,” Villeneuve mentioned in French. “Notre Dame has been standing for 850 years with a wooden frame and a guide roof, so wooden is the way to go.”
Whitaker asked Georgelin how numerous personnel and craftsmen are on the venture.
“If you choose into account all the people in France who are performing each working day for the reconstruction of the cathedral, it really is about 1,000 individuals,” Georgelin mentioned.
That consists of lumberjacks who have lower down 2,000 French oak trees for Notre Dame’s new roof and spire, and carpenters who are meticulously cutting all those trees into beams and supports. It also incorporates stone cutters and sculptors who are painstakingly recreating stone supports and ornaments ruined in the hearth. Within the cathedral, personnel are very carefully cleaning just about every a person of the ornate stained glass home windows, just about every statue, and each individual inch of soot-included stone.
Sculptor Danae Leblond, 23, chiseled to recreate a floral element carved hundreds of years ago.
“We attempt to remake things identically,” she reported in French. “But we are also seeking to have an understanding of the intention of the original sculptors, so we glance at the traces left by their resources.”
Construction crews have created a 600-ton scaffolding inside Notre Dame to support the rebuilding of its damaged stone vaults and a new spire. Georgelin took 60 Minutes to the best of that scaffolding, 100 ft higher than the cathedral’s ground.
“The drama took location here,” Georgelin told Whitaker as he stood in the place where the outdated spire collapsed. “And we have to rebuild the vault of the transept. The [new] spire will be there, 66 meters large.”
That’s 216 toes, and employees are just starting to assemble the enormous picket beams that will assist the new spire. When the framework is ready, 16 copper statues that were being component of the aged spire will be lifted back again into location. Miraculously, they experienced been eradicated from their spots atop the cathedral just 4 times just before the 2019 hearth as element of Villeneuve’s original restoration venture. The sculptures signify the 12 initial apostles of Jesus and four early Christian evangelists.
There was another copper sculpture that was even now at the extremely major of the spire on the working day the hearth broke out. It depicted a rooster, which is the image of the French people. Any person who saw the collapse of the spire need to have assumed that the rooster experienced been eaten by the ferocious flames. But the upcoming working day, Villeneuve noticed it lying on a decrease roof and retrieved it.
It was a little bit mangled from the slide, but in some way untouched by the hearth. It has been still left in the ailment in which it was found, and will be set on exhibit within the cathedral when it reopens at the conclude of 2024.
“Can I notify you,” Villeneuve explained in French, “that I plan to set a new rooster on best of a new spire 1 12 months to the working day just before the reopening of the cathedral. There will however be scaffolding, but the frame of the spire will yet again be in the sky of Paris.”