Recently, Rohan and I spent a long weekend in Paris. While there, we set aside a morning to visit the restored Notre Dame. By all accounts the restoration following the devastating fire has been extraordinary and seeing the building for ourselves was a priority. Sadly, my expectations were not met; partly because they were unrealistically high, also because the information given by the audioguide that I hired managed to annoy me rather than offer any useful information. This blog is about how I saw the visit and and how in retrospect I have managed to salvage the view that I missed. 

The story starts on 15 April 2019. We were in London and the evening news on the television was interrupted to show pictures of flames coming out of Notre Dame’s roof. In no time the fire spread to engulf the Cathedral’s tall, slim spire – the ‘flèche – which soon buckled and collapsed (see illustration). In falling it took with it a large part of the Cathedral’s central vault as it crashed down to the floor below. Despite the efforts of 400 fire-fighters, the flames were not extinguished until next day. 

Like everyone else, the events left us asking ‘What next?’, and as the embers cooled we heard the answer. Standing in front of the smouldering Notre Dame, President Macron announced that the Cathedral would be totally rebuilt with the work completed in five years. He spoke with the authority bestowed on him by legislation introduced in 1905 by which ownership of Notre Dame had been transferred to the State and accordingly that it is the state which became responsible for the Cathedral’s restoration. Importantly, the same act gave the Church the right to use Notre Dame for religious services indefinitely and de facto, to use it as the centre of French Catholicism.

Back to my disappointing visit and first to my unrealistic expectations. From studying articles and documentaries I have discovered how ‘state-of-the-art’ science and technology coupled with the meticulous and patient skills of artisans working with newly-sourced ‘ancient’ materials (stone, glass, lead, timber), have all been harnessed to renovate the damaged building. Through my research, I learned about each stage of the renovation and was enraptured by what I discovered. Ironically, my detailed knowledge meant that visiting the renovated cathedral, where everything was now pristine and the toil and endeavour were hidden, felt strangely hollow. 

And there would have been an obvious way to fill that ‘hollow’. The audioguide I listened to as I went round could have explained important  details of the refurbishment. How each pane of stained glass was individually cleaned; a job made easier because a fine layer of dirt on the glass due to a hundred years of neglect had inadvertently protected its surface from toxic lead vapour. How in order to find the hundreds of oak beams needed for the roof (for the spire they needed to be 20 metres long!), over 1000 mature oaks were hand picked, felled, and after being dried for up to 18 months, brought to Paris from all over France. How the limestone that was used to build the original cathedral was analysed and to replicate the original stones, the weight-bearing pillars, the less- demanding stones of the walls and cladding, and the ‘softer’ stones of the statues were each sourced from different quarries dotted throughout France. Finally, how most of the lead needed to replace the thousand-year old original roofing was provided by a factory in the UK which still makes lead sheets by sand casting, just as in the 12th century. Interestingly, this ‘new’ lead was the product of a complicated process in which spent batteries and the like were recycled!

While crucial, the audioguide said nothing of the sort. Instead it concentrated on ecclesiastical details underlining the Church’s position as head of French Catholicism. At one pont it emphasised how one aisle represented ‘the path of promise’ and so ‘the covenant between God and Mankind’; later, how the four giant pillars that hold up the roof ‘symbolise the union between heaven and earth’, and next how the choir is the place for ‘Eucharistic adoration celebrating the body and blood of Christ’. As an atheist, simply hearing all this annoyed me intensely while offering no details of the renovation I had come to see. Then came the denouement – at the end of the tour we were told how the Cathedral’s renovation demonstrated ‘the continual outpouring of God’s faith’!

While my visit to Notre Dame was disappointing, with hindsight it offered views, insights and ideas on which I now dwell with great pleasure. Interestingly, Rohan’s view was different. She loved her visit as she felt she was seeing Notre Dame as it would have been viewed in the Middle Ages.

For helping me write this blog, I would like to thank Guillemette, Bradley, Kelly, Julian, Rohan and Vivien.

The illustration shows a photo of the flèche of Notre Dame in flames as it started to buckle soon to fall through the vault of the cathedral.