Politely hidden behind construction hoarding, razor wire and a gauze of scaffolding, “Our Lady of Paris” has been healing.
Five years after the flames roared and the world held its breath, Notre Dame cathedral is coming back to life.
It’s like a miracle. Even to us who are so often at the cathedral, it doesn’t take the charm away, and it becomes more beautiful by the day,” said Philippe Jost, head of the movement to rebuild Notre Dame, November.
“There is a Sistine Chapel effect,” he said upon returning to the beloved place, where there is “something to see and discover at all points.”.
With the cathedral set to open to the public on December 8, even today, the cause of the catastrophic fire that blazed through the monument on April 15, 2019, remains a mystery, though investigators believe it was accidental.
Nevertheless, figures behind the reconstruction process speak themselves. The estimated cost for restorer efforts to bring the historic monument to former glory is around €700 million ($737 million), which Rebuilding Notre Dame de Paris – the public body headed by Jost responsible for the job puts the figure at. In all, €846 million ($891 million) were raised in donations from 340,000 donors in 150 countries; any spare cash was used to repair other monuments.
Beyond that, there are the materials used in its rebuilding: The tallest oak felled was 27 meters tall (88 feet high), 1,300 cubic meters of stone were replaced, 8,000 organ pipes (belonging to France’s largest instrument) cleaned and retuned, 1,500 solid oak pews hewed – all the work of 2,000 dedicated artisans.
The result of their labor is even more impressive.
Dark To Light
A few steps beneath the cascading statues of the cathedral’s magnificent façade, darkness gives way to light.
The naked columns of the cathedral soar all the way up to the ceiling; walls stripped naked of centuries of dust and grime now seem brand new.
The cost of the fire has been both financial and intangible—part of the careful cleaning and restoration is said to have stolen some of that mystical gloom and charm the visitors will remember. Those in charge hope it will secure a healthy building for centuries.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron set an ambitious target for reconstruction five years ago and, with his visit on Friday, returned to thank the hundreds who doused the flames and helped with restorations.
For much of the preceding 2,055 days, the site had been a hive of industry, with teams cleaning marble mosaics, retouching frescoes and clambering over the anthill of scaffolding that filled the center of the landmark.
BBC News teams have visited Notre Dame several times since the fire, even as the work ploughed on through Covid-19’s stranglehold on France.
For BBC News cameraman Mark Esplin, one change has been most striking. He recalls how there was still a “huge hole in the ceiling” when he was granted permission to tour the site in 2019, adding: “You could see right up to the sky.”
Like many in 2019, a BBC News team watched in horror, mere meters away, as the cathedral’s spire was wrapped in flames before toppling to the ground. Late in the evening, they heard hundreds of people gathered around the landmark raise their voices in hymn.
“I remember the smell … Mark and I got so close that my jacket stank of smoke for days,” recalls Senior Producer Saskya Vandoorne.
Now it stands within the new 315-foot octagonal base almost identical to Viollet-le-Duc’s vision of what the spire could look like back in the 19th century. That missing element is now visible in the church roof, since early last year that wooden spire finally took away its scaffolding and stepped back onto the Paris sky.
Another milestone was hearing the bells ring out last month for the first time since the fire.
The eight restored bells of the northern belfry, partially destroyed in the fire, tolled early November as part of a technical test before Notre Dame’s grand reopening weekend on December 7 and 8.
Some Parisians said the near-life-size statue of the Virgin Mary, returned to Notre Dame last November, is “miraculous” too. Something that everybody views as symbolic of the heart of the cathedral, it didn’t catch fire.
Its return last month – during an evening procession attended by hundreds – was yet another sign of the deep emotion that this recovery has sparked in the hearts of so many in France.
For Monseigneur Patrick Chauvet, who was rector of Notre Dame de Paris at the time of the fire, the memories are still raw.
“It was an apocalyptic vision, the cathedral was upside down,” he said of his first look inside Notre Dame after the blaze.
“I haven’t fully recovered from it; it’s engraved in the depths of my being.”
A Work Of Passion
On the night of the fire, with the air still acrid with smoke, Macron made a solemn promise.
“We will rebuild Notre Dame. Because that’s what the French expect and because it is what our history deserves,” he said outside the ruins of the cathedral.
It was then that he set the bold deadline of five years to rebuild, which to many seemed an impossible task.
Few beyond those directly involved have been allowed in to see how the specialized laborers and craftspeople have replicated the techniques and materials of the cathedral’s original construction.
But for those soon to revisit Notre Dame, this improbable victory is best seen by looking up.
The ceiling is a lattice of some 1,200 oak logs – the “forest” as workers call it – which were felled in a former royal wood, just like the beams that held up the original roof.
Harvested in France’s west, and fashioned into towering frames in the country’s northeast, the oaks of Notre Dame’s newly soaring roof, wound their way back to Paris along the River Seine.
Atop sits the spire, with a golden phoenix now at its summit, symbolically replacing the rooster that was found amid the rubble of the fire.
All but three of the main beams were from before 1226, and the oldest dates to 1156, cut down during that year.
Even to this day, the nation possesses the greatest oak reserve in the world, an invaluable asset for the reconstruction process. Three of the oaks that were used in restoration were 230 years old, as reported by France’s National Forestry Office.
Carpenters with the “savoir faire” to shape the trees into medieval-style frames were scoured from across France and the world, a process akin to all the highly specialized skills needed for the restoration: stone masons, metal workers, organ builders and more.
These craftsmen, working in tandem with larger firms, were able to deploy antiquated building practices on an industrial scale, rather than faster and cheaper modern building techniques.
For the man in charge of overseeing the reconstruction of the cathedral, using those traditional methods is important. “It’s authenticity, it’s the care to respect the monument,” Jost told BBC News. ”We use the same materials, oak and stone, and with the same techniques.”
A Treasure To Rediscover
Stripped bare of her usual trappings – the pews, hymn books and candles of everyday worship, the tourists of our age and the pilgrims of centuries past – Paris’ treasured cathedral has not been the same.
But despite the indignity of the restoration – the noise, plastic sheeting and metal bars – the majesty of Notre Dame is undeniable.
Possibly, perhaps the most recognizable elements are those renowned stained-glass windows- indeed masterpieces of French Gothic art-and, in particular, three rose windows set into the north, south and west facades of the cathedral.
While glass did remarkably well during the fire, it needed careful restoration work in order to resolve smoke damage and lead damage as well as undergo extensive cleaning after decades of exposure to weathering and general wear and tear.
Years of grime have been peeled away, and vibrant colors have been restored so that once again, lipstick reds and lapis lazuli blues bathe the interior of the cathedral when daylight shines through.
In days, months, and years ahead, Notre Dame – one of the greatest instances of French Gothic architecture – will reclaim its position in the pantheon of Paris’ culture.
Many will be eager for their first visit to this newly restored landmark. And the fiery colors of those famous windows will surely be all the proof needed that Notre Dame – scarred and wounded but transformed – lives on.