EFE / Maria D. Valderrama
The traumatic memory of the fire of April 15, 2019, which destroyed the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral, has given way two years later to the security of seeing the temple again in its splendor in 2024 in front of the favorable progress of the works the initial phase ends at the end this summer.
Two years after the catastrophe, the president, Emmanuel Macron, will visit the works this Thursday accompanied by the Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, and the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, in what will be his first return to the cathedral after of the accident.
If the fire remains a nightmare in the memory of the French, the Government has turned the works into a showcase for the craftsmen and technicians working on its reconstruction, and this will be the main reason for the leader’s visit.
“It is an opportunity to thank all those who have saved the cathedral, those who are working on its reconstruction and the 340,000 donors from around the world who have made these works possible,” Elisi said today.
It was Macron who assured the night of the fire that Notre Dame would reopen in 2024 and for now the date remains the same, albeit with conditions.
A FIRST PHASE FULL OF COMPLICATIONS
The body that coordinates the works expects to return the cathedral to worship and sightseeing on April 15, 2024, although the work will not be completely finished.
“Now my concern is to get rigorous planning to set our path for reopening the cult in 2024,” General Jean-Louis Georgelin, coordinator of the works, said in a video about the restoration broadcast on networks social.
This is despite the three challenges that have complicated the interventions: lead pollution, the health crisis and the order issued by the prefecture which, due to the danger, regulates the number of people who may be in the cathedral.
Reconstruction is finally beginning to be seen as the first phase of consolidation ends, which will have lasted more than two years and which aimed to remove the burned scaffolding from the needle and which threatened to collapse the building, the evacuation of the large organ, restoration tests in the chapels and the cleaning of the vaults.
Before being able to advance, the technicians now intervene in the installation of the scaffolding inside to stabilize the vaults with wooden hangers and in the placement of a protector to prevent water from entering the cathedral.
FINALLY, THE RESTORATION
The second half of 2021 will mark the beginning of the restoration itself, although some work has already begun: the protocol to test the chapel of Sant Ferran and Our Lady of Guadalupe the cleaning process that will be used in the 24 cathedral chapels, which has been successfully tested.
The selection and felling of the 1,000 oaks has also been done and the wood will be used to rebuild the carcass of the transept and the needle, destroyed in the fire.
Studies for reconstruction, very advanced, have closed the controversy over whether to make an intervention faithful to the original version or add a contemporary bet.
Macron gave its approval in July 2020 to map the reconstruction, although according to the entity responsible for the works it will be close to that of the missing but not identical roof.
“It will not be a simple facsimile of the defunct work. True to medieval design, it will restore the relevant repairs in the structural or heritage plan,” the body states in a note.
The company Socrates, responsible for the restoration of the copper statues of the needle, which had been removed from the roof days before the fire and were saved, has also retouched the rooster that crowned the peak of the construction and that it fell to the ground during the fire, although without suffering significant damage.
However, as the general director of Socrates, Richard Boyer, told EFE, the rooster, the symbol animal of France, has only been retouched and not restored.
One possibility raised by some workers close to the works is that in this case the Government will decide to make a tender to put on the needle a sculpture with a contemporary touch.
The ancient rooster will be exhibited in the cathedral as a witness to the catastrophe.
He will not be the only witness to the catastrophe, about which the film director Jean-Jacques Annaud (“Le nom de la rose” -The name of the rose-, “Seven Years in Tibet” -Seven years in Tibet-) is currently preparing a film.
The cathedral has received donations from around the world worth 833 million euros (almost $ 1 billion), an amount that may be spectacular but may not be enough for the total works and expenses remaining to cover , so the demand for donations continues.