Notre-Dame Cathedral will reopen after the 2019 fire. This is not the first time that savings have to be made

This weekend’s reopening of Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral is the culmination of a repair and restoration effort more than five years after it was destroyed by a catastrophic fire.

Notre-Dame is one of the most recognizable and beloved buildings in the Western world, but it wasn’t always that way. After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars at the turn of the 18th century, it was in such a state of disrepair that the Parisian authorities considered demolishing it.

According to historian Bradley Stephens, it was author Victor Hugo who helped restore both its structure and reputation with his 1831 novel. Notre-Dame de Paris — better known by some by its original English title, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

“Hugo was arguing that the cathedral still had enormous symbolic value both for French culture, but also for French national identity,” Stephens, a professor of French literature at the University of Bristol, told CBC radio. . Day 6.

Echoes of these arguments can be found in French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement immediately after the April 2019 fire devastated the cathedral, positioning it as a nation-building exercise aimed at uniting the French people.

During the French Revolution, Notre-Dame suffered several “mutilations”, as Hugo describes them. Many of its stained glass windows have been broken or stolen. The metal bells installed in its towers were melted down to be cast into cannons.

“Previously, Parisians were concerned that this cathedral had become quite ugly. There were aesthetic purists who felt that its mixture of Romanesque and Gothic styles made it quite irregular, that it was not uniform, that it was it did not fit with the more neoclassical tastes that prevailed in more recent French history,” Stephens explained.

“And Hugo says to his readers: ‘No, these are the strengths of the cathedral. The mixture of styles of the cathedral, the fact that it has been there for so long speaks to a natural wonder and dynamism, and it also helps to bear witness to the changing history of France.'”

According to the plan

The novel helped galvanize the small but growing number of people who shared Hugo’s views. In the early 1840s, King Louis-Philippe commissioned architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to oversee the repair and restoration of the cathedral, a project that would take several decades.

Viollet-le-Duc’s work has remained the model for the cathedral’s modern restoration, including its now iconic 19th-century spire.

“He was a genius,” Philippe Villeneuve, the cathedral’s chief architect since 2013, said of Viollet-le-Duc. “My role was to ensure that this vision endured.”

After the fire, Macron issued a decree to begin the most ambitious restoration in France’s modern history: restoring a building that originally took nearly 200 years to construct, in just five years.

Villeneuve and his team installed state-of-the-art fire safety systems in the cathedral to help protect it from future fires or other disasters.

The attic, now divided into three compartments – choir, transept and nave – is equipped with advanced thermal cameras, smoke detectors and a revolutionary water misting system.

Unlike traditional sprinklers, this system releases a fine mist of water droplets designed to extinguish flames while minimizing damage to fragile wood and stone.

“The mist saturates the air, reducing oxygen levels to smother fires without damaging wood or stone,” Villeneuve explained. “These are the most advanced fire safety systems in all French cathedrals. We had to learn lessons from what happened. We owe it to the future.”

The people’s palace

Macron’s announcement to repair the cathedral in just five years has sparked unprecedented global support, with donations quickly approaching US$1 billion.

Michel Picaud, president of the Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris charity, said his group’s list of donors had grown from 700 before the fire to nearly 50,000 afterward, with thousands of them from over 60 countries, including hundreds of supporters and donors from Canada.

The charity was established in 2017 to support restoration efforts which had begun shortly before the fire.

Picaud noted that broad support came largely from people interested in Notre Dame beyond its role as a Catholic place of worship. Some see it as one of the most attractive tourist destinations in France. Others respect his place in French political history. Still others have drawn their affection from Hugo’s novel and its adaptations, including the 1996 Disney animated film. The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Stephens noted that Hugo was upset that his novel had been renamed The Hunchback of Notre Dame in English, as it diverted much of the attention away from the cathedral itself and towards Quasimodo.

“Of course, Quasimodo is the human figure in the entire story who… appeals to our sense of humanity, as this maligned, hunchbacked bell ringer is ostracized by society but demonstrates his kindness and inner beauty,” a he declared.

“Although Hugo, of course, wanted this to be an integral part of the story he was telling, he was at the same time concerned that by changing the title and focusing only on the hunchback, readers might miss out on the broader meaning of where the hunchback was. the cathedral fits into it. »

Its importance beyond Catholicism dates back to its original construction, according to Agnès Poirier, journalist and author of Notre-Dame: the soul of France.

“Unlike other Gothic cathedrals of the time, the aristocracy and kings paid very little for its construction,” she explained. The currentIt’s Matt Galloway.

Funding came from a variety of sources, including the Bishop of Paris, revenues from its fertile agricultural lands, and donations from bourgeois, prostitutes, and many others, making it “the people’s palace,” in the words by Poire.

The revolutionaries used it for a variety of purposes, including as a polling station and as a university, which was notable since the rebels were atheists.

“After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Notre-Dame rang and rang for the slain cartoonists, even though they were fiercely anticlerical,” Poirer said.

“So she belongs to everyone and she accepts everyone.”

Stephens says the greatest trials of Notre-Dame de Paris have parallels with France’s tumultuous history. In the 19th century, Hugo wrote a novel extolling its importance as people grappled with the legacy of the French Revolution.

“In the 21st century, we face a historically Catholic and imperial power trying to find its place in a multicultural, multi-religious and post-colonial world, at a time when the country is gripped by fears of possible international decline. influence as well as growing national discord at the national level,” Stephens said.

“So the importance of Notre Dame may be to help find common ground, to unify rather than divide.”