
It took about 250 companies, 2,000 workers, about $900 million, a tight deadline and a lot of national pride.
Illustrations by Jonathan Blezard
Aurelien Breeden has tracked the restoration’s progress since he covered the fire in 2019. He was given a tour of the work site in June.
The embers of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris were still hot when President Emmanuel Macron vowed that France would rebuild it to be “more beautiful than ever.”
Then the French leader gave a deadline so ambitious it took many aback: “I want this to be finished in five years,” Mr. Macron said.
It was April 2019, and flames had just torn through the 860-year-old Gothic monument, obliterating its ancient wood and lead roofing and sending the tip of its spire crashing through the stone vaults below. Some called the deadline feasible. Others said it was wildly unrealistic.
Now, after five and a half years and about $900 million in donations, France is on the verge of success.
Renovations to the cathedral’s exterior will continue, but the bulk of what was destroyed has been restored. Excitement is mounting just days before Notre-Dame reopens for millions of tourists and pilgrims.
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The tight deadline was “necessary,” Philippe Jost, the head of the reconstruction task force, told us during a tour of the work in progress in June. The daunting goal served to unite about 250 companies and 2,000 workers and artisans from all over France who knew the world was watching, and drove them to give their all for the project of a lifetime.
The day of the tour, after taking a clanging elevator to the top of a maze of scaffolding, we saw roofers installing new lead sheets and crested ornaments on the roof, whistling, drilling, hammering and soldering as birds squawked above. Perched on the new spire were a cross and a gilded copper rooster that contains relics of saints and now, a scroll naming all of the restoration workers.
Under the direction of Philippe Villeneuve, the chief architect, those workers overcame Covid-19 lockdowns, toiled under stringent safety measures to avoid exposure to toxic lead dust, and coped with the death last year of Mr. Jost’s predecessor, Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin, who prided himself on keeping the project on track.
“At the beginning — especially in the beginning — most people didn’t think that it was possible,” Mr. Jost said. “And he was very clear in his head, and with others, that we will do it.”
Stabilizing the cathedral
In 2019, when the flames were finally extinguished just before midnight after a five-hour battle, emergency workers were able to enter the cathedral and assess the damage. They found reason for both heartbreak and relief.
The bell towers, stained-glass rose windows and precious artworks were mostly intact. But the structure had come dangerously close to collapsing.
Notre-Dame’s limestone, scorched and then drenched by tens of thousands of gallons of water from firefighters, was coated with ash and lead dust. Gables and statues were threatening to fall. The building had to be secured before any repairs could proceed, a process that ended in 2021.
“Our teams had to intervene within a very short time-frame, but with infinite precaution,” said Julien Le Bras, the chief executive of Le Bras Frères. His company, which specializes in restoring historical monuments, was working on Notre-Dame when the fire hit, and helped scramble to stabilize it. “It really was a very delicate piece of engineering work,” he said.
Rope workers pulled tarpaulin coverings across gaping holes to shield the interior from rain; later, a permanent sliding “umbrella” was created.
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Sensors placed throughout the cathedral monitored every structural shift. A forest of scaffolding over 80 feet high was assembled inside, allowing architects to assess normally inaccessible sections and helping prop up weakened vaults with wooden arches.
Workers also strengthened Notre-Dame’s 28 flying buttresses, a Middle Ages innovation that allowed for thinner walls and taller cathedrals. With the weight of the roof mostly gone, the buttresses were bolstered with eight-ton arches to prevent the walls from collapsing.
One of the biggest concerns was the 220-ton tangle of 40,000 steel scaffolding tubes that the flames had fused together — remnants of renovation on the spire that predated the fire and that were now threatening the structure. They had to be stabilized, then painstakingly dismantled or cut up and removed by crane.
A deep cleaning
Notre-Dame was a mess.
Remote-controlled robots pulled out charred beams, fallen stones and other fragments that were carefully sorted and classified because they had archaeological and scientific value or could be reused.
Inside, workers removed dust and centuries of accumulated grime using high-powered vacuums, a special strip-away latex coating and damp sponges, returning hundreds of thousands of square feet of limestone to its original brilliance.
Restorers spruced up stained-glass windows, fixed railings, and cleared grit from murals and painted decorations in the choir and nave chapels, revealing vivid pigments and gilding.
“We were able to witness all the other craftsmen at work,” Charlotte Phelouzat, who worked with 13 other independent painting restorers, said after showing a newly cleaned depiction of St. George slaying the dragon, as the noise of buzz saws and beeping forklifts echoed off the cathedral’s brightly lit stonework.
“It was quite exceptional,” she said.
The cathedral’s great organ — one of the largest in France, with over 100 stops and about 8,000 pipes — was not burned or damaged by water, but it did have to be cleansed of lead dust.
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Parts of the organ that were too big or too fragile to be moved were cleaned or replaced on site; the rest was dismantled and sent to three workshops in the Hérault, Corrèze and Vaucluse areas of southern France, where restorers carefully dusted pipes, cleaned windchests that control the organ’s air flow, and redid its electric and pneumatic transmission system.
Once the organ was reassembled, specialists harmonized it at nighttime — which proved challenging when scaffolding was altering the acoustics.
“It was very meticulous work,” said Bertrand Cattiaux, a retired organ specialist who had worked on previous restorations of the organ and who contributed to this one with his successor. “Hours of very small, very sensitive gestures that can considerably change the sound.”
Finding oaks and limestone
Suggestions that Notre-Dame should get a modern update were quickly shelved. In a country where preserving architectural heritage and centuries-old skills is paramount, the idea never gained popular traction. After all, many argued, the cathedral’s stone and woodwork had stood the test of time for over 800 years.
So using the right material was critical.
“At the end of the day, we are as close as possible to what existed before the fire,” said Jean-Louis Bidet, the technical director of Ateliers Perrault, a company in the Loire Valley that specializes in historical monuments, after ducking into the new wooden attic his company had helped build.
Some doubted that France had the right trees or enough skilled carpenters to rebuild the medieval attic — a lattice of ancient beams known as “the forest,” made primarily of rows of giant triangular trusses — and the 19th-century spire, a complex assembly of about 1,000 oak pieces that culminates more than 300 feet above the ground.
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Those fears proved unfounded.
Over two thousand oak trees were donated by private and public forests across France, especially in the east and north. The National Forests Office and France Bois Forêt, a timber trade group, coordinated the selection process, using original 19th-century architectural plans and a trove of archaeological and digital data.
Walking around forests, “Notre-Dame was on everybody’s mind,” said Michel Druilhe, the president of France Bois Forêt from 2018 to 2021. “We looked at the trees and worked with architects to see how they could be used, how they could be placed, how they should be sawed.”
Logs — some over 60 feet long — were transported to sawmills around France, cut into beams, dried naturally to lose humidity and sap, then sent to carpentry workshops.
For the stonework, scientists and engineers studied blocks recovered from the cathedral and identified suitable limestone quarries to provide replacements. Over 45,000 cubic feet of stone were sourced from quarries in the Oise and Aisne areas, north of Paris, to rebuild collapsed vaults, plug walls and adorn gables with new sculpture.
Skills from across France
The renovation tapped a constellation of workshops, craftsmen, and companies around the country who combined ancestral techniques with modern engineering.
“If we are able to succeed and move forward, it’s because the skills are there,” said Mr. Jost, the head of the reconstruction task force. “You can’t rebuild a cathedral with good feelings alone.”
Instead of entrusting it all to one company and its subcontractors, the task force split the project into more than 140 lots and opened up bids for each one. Some of the 250 businesses involved were nationally recognized; others were tiny workshops with niche expertise. Often they joined forces.
The apse cross, for instance, was restored in rural Normandy by Fer Art Forge, a small metalworking shop on an old farm, in coordination with UTB, a construction and renovation firm of over 1,000 employees that did the choir covering.
“No matter the size of the company, it’s people’s skills that count,” Julien Soccard, the operations manager for UTB, said in May at the workshop, as cows grazed in apple orchards near the 40-foot cross — an ornate mix of steel, lead, brass and copper that fell during the fire.
Attention to detail was deep. Carpenters who hand-hewed beams used 60 or so long-handled axes and broadaxes that were forged manually in the eastern Alsace region with detailed specifications, down to the kind of markings the blades had to leave.
“We were struck by the emotion of carpenters bonding with their axes,” said Soumia Luquet, who runs the forge with her husband. “That is the epitome for a blacksmith.”
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Her workshop and four others assembled for an “unprecedented challenge,” she said. It was a rare opportunity to show their skills. Over four months, 10 or so ax makers slept and ate in her home and toiled at the forge, welding steel and puddled iron together at roughly 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit.
“This profession disappeared almost entirely during the 20th century with industrialization,” said Martin Claudel, one of the ax-makers, who trekked back and forth from his own workshop in Brittany. “Notre-Dame shined a big spotlight on it.”
It all came together in Paris
Notre-Dame buzzed with increasing intensity as the deadline approached and reconstruction started in earnest. Many companies were used to working on historical monuments, but not simultaneously on a cramped island in the heart of the French capital.
The choreography was complex, requiring years of advance planning to ensure that the long list of those involved — architects, engineers, carpenters, masons, steeplejacks, archaeologists, crane operators, roofers and more — did not step on one another’s toes or cause delays.
At the peak, 600 workers were on site daily, entering through locker rooms with two sides connected by showers, leaving street clothes at one end and putting on construction garb at the other to prevent lead contamination.
“The space was small, the deadline was tight, and there were exceptional security requirements,” said Mr. Le Bras, whose company also handled most of the scaffolding and, with three others — Cruard Charpente, Métiers du Bois and Asselin — worked on the spire. “But everyone involved on the project, without exception, was passionate above all.”
“It’s almost more of a mission than a construction project,” he said.
Much of the cathedral’s new wooden roofing was dry-fitted — in Lorraine for the spire, in Normandy for the nave, and in the Loire Valley for the choir — then brought to Paris, reassembled section by section on giant platforms, and hoisted up by crane.
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Workers also installed fire protections that were lacking in 2019, including misting devices, massive firewalls, thermal cameras and thicker roof boards that burn more slowly. A recovery system to treat rainwater running off the lead roof before it enters the sewers will also be tested.
Collapsed vaults were rebuilt, stones weakened by the scorching blaze were replaced, and a new checkered marble platform was installed for the altar.
On our visit, we were led onto temporary walkways though the new “forest,” where we saw sawdust-coated white tarps stretched across the vaults and electric cables snaking along the pathways
But one day soon, Notre-Dame will again be a working cathedral, not a construction site, and architectural features like the forest will recede into hiding.
The fire and the reconstruction that followed afforded Parisians a rare, if distressing, firsthand glimpse into the heart of a beloved landmark. So last year, when gigantic solid-oak trusses were delivered by barge and lifted by crane, a crowd quickly gathered on the banks of the Seine to watch.
Loïc Baril, 75, rushed over as soon as he heard the news, though the summer heat was blazing.
“We’ll only see this once in our lifetime,” he explained.
Produced by Josephine Sedgwick and Tala Safie
A correction was made on
Dec. 7, 2024
:
An earlier version of this article misstated the temperature at which ax makers welded steel and puddled iron together. It was roughly 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit, not over 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.
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