SAVING NOTRE DAME

When flames ripped through the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in April 2019, the world feared for its survival. Now a small team of scientists is working towards its restoration and discovering secrets along the way. Christa Lesté-Lasserre spoke to some of them about their work and its challenges.

- Christa Leste-Lasserre

Fate.’ It is the word, etched into a stone of the North Tower, that inspired Victor Hugo to write The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the novel that purportedly changed the history of the most-famous cathedral in Paris. Pillaged and vandalised after France’s 1789 revolution, Notre Dame de Paris had become a symbol of monarchical power worthy of destruction. But when Hugo’s book bearing its name appeared in 1831, deep emotion stirred the nation. By 1843, the French government had commissioned a massive overhaul of the 65,000-square-foot monument, conserving some of the world’s richest medieval architectural designs – employing stone, wood, metal, paint, and glass – and adding what some observers might describe as ‘ambitious’ 19th-century touches.

Touches, for example, like the 315-foot-high spire that collapsed in a ball of smoke and flames last April – as, to the horror of the entire world, the 19th century came crashing down in the 21st. But, if the terrible events of that night represented the end of one chapter in Notre Dame’s history, the next will be written by a small group of French scientists who specialise in the restoration of historical monuments, and who have been collaborating with and advising the architectural team in charge of its rescue. As they strive to understand the stricken structure’s most-pressing scientific needs, they have been working days, nights, and weekends – in temperatures ranging from 50°C, in its the ray-reflecting white stone heights during France’s heatwave last summer, down to near-freezing in the damp winter months in the windswept and as-yet-uncovered nave.