How a divided France came together to rebuild Notre-Dame
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
It took Jean-Louis Bidet and his team of highly skilled carpenters nearly two years to transform 1,300 oak trees into the wooden backbone of Notre-Dame.
Racing to restore the Paris cathedral that was nearly destroyed by a devastating fire in 2019, the carpenters used only axes and no modern tools to assemble and install the massive wood frame that supports the roof, almost identical to the 13th-century original.
“We did everything by hand, as they would have in the medieval era,” says Bidet, whose employer Ateliers Perrault specialises in restoring historic monuments.
Yet in the upper reaches of the gothic cathedral where the blaze originated, a layer of modernity has been placed atop the old. A state of the art fire protection system was installed to safeguard the wood frame that is known as la forêt (the forest), including heat-detecting video cameras and nozzles able to spray out a fine water mist.
“The technology is so much better today than the one in place on the night of the fire,” says Eric Lazzari, an executive at DEF, which made the equipment.
This combination of tradition and innovation has infused the restoration of Notre-Dame, made possible with donations of around €840mn. Completed in just over five years, it has involved the work of some 2,000 workers, many of them from small businesses which have showcased French craftsmanship.
For many in France, the price tag is worth it to resurrect a gothic masterpiece that has been a backdrop for key moments in the nation’s history: looted during the French Revolution, it was the coronation place of Napoleon I and where Charles de Gaulle was mourned.
“Notre-Dame is a polyphonic monument, meaning it tells a multitude of stories from our shared history,” says Jérémie Patrier-Leitus, a member of parliament from northern France who from 2019 to 2022 worked at the public agency charged with repairing the cathedral. “Every time the French want to find unity again, they come together in Notre-Dame.”
That will be the hope at grand reopening festivities this weekend hosted by President Emmanuel Macron and attended by dignitaries including Donald Trump and Prince William. The Archbishop of Paris will formally commence proceedings on Saturday by rapping his staff on the shuttered doors of the cathedral, bidding them to open. On Sunday morning, a mass will be held to mark the tragedy that touched people across the country and the world.
Yet this moment of accord comes at a time of deep political division and distrust in France. The country’s minority government collapsed on Wednesday amid contention over a proposed deficit-cutting budget. At the same time, labour unions are preparing for a winter of fresh strike action and protest against public sector job cuts.
By contrast, the story of Notre-Dame’s reconstruction is one of unlikely partnerships, some unprecedented in France: between the state and billionaire donors, between bureaucrats and labourers, and in spite of sometimes bitter clashes of vision.
To the surprise of some, this national project has successfully fixed not only what was damaged by the fire, but also granted Notre-Dame a new lease of life. Given the dilapidated state of the cathedral and lack of resources, in some ways the fire was a “blessing in disguise”, says Philippe Villeneuve, the chief architect of Notre-Dame since 2013.
Before the fire, the state had planned a €150mn, multiyear renovation, but funding had not been guaranteed. Gaping holes and cracks had marred the lead roofing; damaged gargoyles that channel water run-off had been replaced with plastic pipes; rust encrusted the spire.
“Before the fire, we’d basically given up on restoring the interiors, given that it would just touch off a spiral of spending, and were slowly addressing only the most critical parts of the exterior,” Villeneuve tells the Financial Times. “But with the donations, we were able to undertake a comprehensive restoration programme. I never imagined for a second that we would go this far.”
Although the exact cause of the blaze on April 15 2019 remains unknown, it began out of sight in the wood frame above the vaulted stone ceilings. It then spread across the entire roof, causing the 19th-century spire to collapse and fall through the stone vaulted ceiling into the nave.
Disastrous as it was, the fire might have been worse. If the pair of bell towers at the front of the cathedral had collapsed, it could have brought down much of the intricately carved facade. Many priceless artefacts were spared, including the round stained glass windows known as les roses, dating from the Middle ages.
But the intense heat had caused a fine cloud of lead dust to settle all over the interior, which meant that even elements left undamaged by the fire would need restorative work.
The morning after the blaze, Macron declared in a televised address that the cathedral would be fixed within five years. Many considered it a rash promise, with little information yet available on how gravely the structure had been damaged.
“French women, French men, and all of you foreigners who love France and love Paris, I want to tell you tonight that I share your sorrow, but I also share your hope. We now have work to do,” said the president.
Contributions of all sizes flowed in from 340,000 people in 150 countries, but most of the cost has been met by some of France’s wealthiest families — an unusual move in a country where philanthropy is rarer than in the US and the state is responsible for financing the maintenance of religious monuments.
The Pinault family behind the luxury group Kering moved first, pledging €100mn, followed by their rivals, the Arnault family that controls LVMH, who promised €200mn. The foundation of the Bettencourt clan, whose fortune comes from cosmetics maker L’Oréal, matched the €200mn. Paired with another €100mn from French oil company Total, the biggest donors contributed more than two-thirds of the restoration budget.
The architect
When Philippe Villeneuve first stepped into the cathedral the morning after the fire in 2019 he felt sadness and bewilderment. “Then . . . I set aside the emotions and became the architect who must save it,” says the civil servant who has been in charge of the cathedral since 2013. In the following days, he drafted a plan for how to stabilise the damaged cathedral, clean out the piles of charred debris, and begin painstaking restoration work — all the while working against the clock. Now that it is finished, Villeneuve says he feels a sense of “collective pride” for what the teams have accomplished. “When people come into Notre-Dame for the first time, it will take their breath away,” he predicts.
Some on the left in France were suspicious of the families’ intentions, with one union boss slamming the powerful CEOs who were quick to give to Notre-Dame, yet refused to raise wages for their own workers. To counter the idea their donations were self-interested, two of the families renounced the tax benefits they were due for the donations.
It did not buy them influence either. The state was firmly in the driver’s seat and the donors were neither granted any governance powers nor consulted on major decisions.
In the days after the fire, Macron made the decision to create an ad hoc state entity to carry out the restoration, in effect relegating the donors to a marginal role.
Reporting directly to the Élysée Palace and the culture ministry, the new agency was granted powers to sidestep bureaucracy, streamlining decision-making and contracting to meet the five-year deadline.
To lead it, Macron selected a retired general, Jean-Louis Georgelin, with no experience in historic preservation, betting that the gruff military man would blast through red tape and motivate the army raised to work on the restoration.
The agency did create a committee which met regularly to keep donors informed about how their money was being spent, but disclosure was relatively limited.
Guillaume Poitrinal, a former real estate CEO and president of the Fondation du Patrimoine, which collected funds in a role similar to Britain’s National Trust, says he would have liked to see the donors take a more active role.
The picture restorer
The intricate painted murals in the chapels behind the altar of Notre-Dame were not touched by the flames, but smoke darkened their already grimy surface. Marie Parant, an experienced mural restorer, recruited a cast of dozens to carefully strip away the layers of soot and dirt from the 19th-century murals created by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Perched on scaffolding to reach the four-storey high murals, they applied gels and solvents with brushes to revive the colours. “We never touch the original painting, only clean it, and nothing is added,” she explains. “Everything you see is the original just having been revealed again.”
“We had no word to say on the project’s choices, budgets, or management,” he says. Although the work has been carried out “really well”, Poitrinal says “things could have been done differently” to set a precedent for private donors helping with the upkeep of French architectural heritage — something he says is sorely needed at a time of tight government budgets and wide deficits.
In France, the state or local governments are responsible for the upkeep of all religious buildings built before 1905, under a law passed that year to ensure the separation of church and state. Buildings are leased for free and in perpetuity to the Catholic Church to use for worship, while the dioceses are able to design and maintain the interiors.
Yet the state simply does not have the means to keep up with repairs, given that some 5,000 churches in France are estimated to need work and hundreds are closed for safety reasons, according to foundation estimates.
Upending long-held French habits, the experience of Notre-Dame has now opened the door to the mobilisation of private money to pay for this kind of work.
Macron’s government recently suggested another proposal to help pay for maintenance of French religious heritage: charging an entrance fee to the millions of tourists who visit Notre-Dame annually, as do other world-famous churches like St Paul’s Cathedral in London and la Sagrada Família in Barcelona.
The church immediately rejected the idea of a €5 fee, insisting it was important to keep Notre-Dame open to all. “Now is not the time to have this debate,” says an Elysée official, suggesting the idea could return to the table later.
No project of the scale and visibility of the Notre-Dame renovation was ever going to be immune to infighting at a time of discord and disunity.
Macron, an increasingly polarising figure, opened up a debate only days after the fire over whether a touch of modernity should be incorporated into the cathedral during the restoration, so as to mark the fire for future generations.
His government declared that France would host an architectural competition to decide how to replace the destroyed spire of Notre-Dame, opening the door to it being reimagined as well as rebuilt.
Wild, speculative designs proliferated online: the British architect Norman Foster proposed an entirely glass roof similar to the one he gave to Berlin’s Reichstag, capped with a new spire made of glass and steel complete with a viewing platform.
Vincent Callebaut, a French architect known for pioneering green designs, pitched the idea of installing a greenhouse to grow vegetables under a rounded glass roof, paired with solar panels to power the cathedral’s electricity.
Traditionalists howled online under the hashtag #touchepasànotredame. France’s civil servant architects, whose mission it is to protect cultural and religious heritage, argued for rebuilding the spire just as the 19th-century architect and restorer Eugène Viollet-le-Duc had designed it.
The master carpenter
The fondest memory that master carpenter Jean-Louis Bidet has of the project he led to rebuild Notre-Dame’s 13th-century wood frame took place in a forest. He and a team from Ateliers Perrault had to select 1,300 oak trees to replicate the original structure before the fire. The trunks had to be a certain size, quite straight, and the right colour, so it took months of wandering the woodland to find them all. “Some days, you pick out five trees, another day you might find 20,” he recalls. His team of some 50 carpenters used a 3D map of the original frame to transform the trees into the exact shape and specifications. Sections were assembled in the Loire region before they were transported to Paris and hoisted into place. “It took an incredible amount of energy but we’re really proud of the result,” he says.
Macron fell in the modernisers’ camp as a longtime fan of contemporary art, visible in his choices in the Elysée palace, where he had placed works by abstract painter Pierre Soulages and conceptual artist Daniel Buren.
France also has a record of undertaking modernisations of its landmarks, the best known of which was the addition of IM Pei’s glass pyramid to the courtyards of the Louvre museum, which initially generated controversy but is now adored.
Yet regardless of the president’s tastes, architects who work for state heritage agencies recommended in 2020 that Notre-Dame be rebuilt as it was before the fire.
Villeneuve, the cathedral’s architect, underlines that such an approach is the rule in restoration of major historical monuments if they are damaged, as called for under international accords to which France is a signatory.
“Our role is to try to restore and to preserve, not engage in creation, and in the case of Notre-Dame, we have the archives, techniques, and the materials to do so,” he says. “This is not a lazy or conservative choice, it is a principled one based on absolute respect for the monument.”
The National Commission for Heritage and Architecture (CNPA), an independent panel that advises the French government on projects affecting historical monuments, backed that stance unanimously in July 2020. Macron acquiesced — there would be no new spire.
But soon enough the modernisers and traditionalists were again fighting over another idea floated by Macron, namely replacing a series of stained glass windows installed by Viollet-le-Duc with new figurative ones to be designed by contemporary artists.
The proposal shocked conservationists because the windows did not break during the fire, and had been carefully cleaned during restoration works, using donors’ money.
“The CNPA spent a lot of time and energy convincing Macron that he was wrong to want to replace the spire with something modern, and once he ceded that point, the debate shifted to the windows,” says Alexandre Gady, a Sorbonne professor who specialises in historical preservation and is a member of the advisory panel. “This is akin to an act of the prince; it is clear Macron wants to leave his mark on Notre-Dame.”
In the Elysée, they push back at such criticism, saying it makes sense to memorialise the fire for future generations. “Notre-Dame is a palimpsest: every period adds its touches,” an official says. The original Viollet-le-Duc windows will not be hidden away in some basement, they add, and would be placed in a future museum to be built near the cathedral.
After reviewing submissions from several artists, including Buren who is seen to have the president’s favour, a selection is expected in January.
Yet in July the CNPA voted unanimously against the new stained glass window project. Gady says associations that advocate for cultural heritage are planning to file administrative complaints to try to stop the project. “This fight is not over,” he adds.
Such acrimony will hopefully be set aside this week to celebrate the reopening.
The unprecedented efforts by the artisans who worked on the edifice took centre stage on November 29 when Macron and his wife Brigitte, guided by the Archbishop of Paris Laurent Ulrich and Notre-Dame Rector Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, admired the interiors.
Some 1,200 workers and artists — carpenters, stonemasons, master glassmakers, painting restorers, specialists who cleaned the grand organ, crane operators, technicians who dangled from heights using ropes — showed up to admire the fruits of their labour.
The organ specialist
At almost 13 metres tall, the organ in Notre-Dame is one of the biggest in the world. The fire had left its 8,000 metal pipes covered in lead dust, so the entire instrument had to be dismantled and removed for cleaning — a job that ended up taking Olivier Chevron’s company Atelier Cattiaux more than two years. “The organ is so big, it has very narrow staircases and hallways within it just like a building,” says Chevron, pictured above right with organ tuner Thomas Ville. The 57-year-old had already worked on a first restoration of the same organ as a young apprentice some 30 years ago, so felt a sense of duty to come to the aid of the instrument. “I felt we all had to do our best work because the world was watching Notre-Dame,” he says.
Macron took a victory lap himself while thanking the artisans, rebuking those who criticised as “crazy” and “impossible” his pledge to reopen in five years. “The blaze at Notre-Dame was a national wound, and you have been its remedy, through determination, through work, through commitment,” he said. “You have transformed ashes into art.”
On Sunday, the first mass since the fire will be held at Notre-Dame, a long awaited moment for the faithful. Ribadeau Dumas tells the FT that extra services were being added and hours for prayer extended, while other steps, such as a new online reservation system, had been taken to ensure the cathedral could handle the 15mn visitors expected each year.
“People will see that the renovation is simple, good and very beautiful,” says Ribadeau Dumas. “These living stones were built 860 years ago to welcome believers and for them, and others, to find peace.”
The last thing visitors exiting the new Notre-Dame will see is a new message that Ribadeau Dumas asked to be inscribed over the great wooden doors: “Peace be with you.”
Graphic illustration by Ian Bott and Bob Haslett
Comments