3.40amįire service spokesman Gabriel Plus says the fire is “completely under control. François-Henri Pinault announces his family, one of the richest in France, will donate €100m to the restoration appeal. Fire appears to have started at height of scaffolding on roof. Paris prosecutors say they are investigating a case of “involuntary destruction by fire” and interviewing workers on the restoration project.
We will rebuild Notre Dame, because it is what the French people expect, it is what our history deserves, and it is our deep destiny.” 1.05-1.15am, Tuesday 16 April It’s the cathedral of every French person, even those who have never visited it. Authentic reconstruction takes time: For instance, the trees themselves need to be dried for up to 18 months before they can be used in construction.Īs of right now, work on the cathedral reconstruction is not expected to begin until 2022.Macron thanks firefighters and says in widely praised address that Notre Dame is “our history, our literature, the epicentre of our life, the standard by which we measure our distances. But many have dismissed this plan as “unrealistic,” per the AP. Workers have been cleaning up the damage wrought by the blaze and stabilizing the building’s lower levels since 2019, reports the Guardian.įrench President Emmanuel Macron has previously stated that the country plans to reopen the Unesco World Heritage site by 2024, in time for the Paris Summer Olympics. (Per the New York Times, the roof’s attic was previously dubbed the forêt, or forest, for its highly flammable nest of century-old beams.) They will also painstakingly reconstruct the roof’s wooden lattice. Per a translation by the Guardian, Dominique de Villebonne, deputy director of France’s National Forests Office (ONF), told Le Parisien’s Emilie Torgemen that the project “is about ancient forestry heritage, not 20-year-old trees, but those that are very old, including plantations ordered by former kings to build ships and ensure the grandeur of the French fleet.”Īrchitects Philippe Villeneuve and Rémi Fromont are overseeing the reconstruction of the spire, which was designed by Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc in 1859 and stood 93 meters (305 feet) tall. In response, officials pointed out that the oaks would have been cut down anyway during routine forest maintenance. Naomi Rea of Artnet Newsreports that a petition condemning the trees’ removal as “ecocide” garnered more than 40,000 signatures. Before it was cut down this week, one tree had lived for more than 230 years: As CNN notes, the oak was just a sapling during the French Revolution.
Some of the felled trees stood 60 feet tall, according to the AP. The trees naturally grow with a slight curve, making them ideally suited for their destination as the bulk of the reconstructed wooden spire.Ī view of Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral burning on Apits iconic Gothic spire was almost entirely destroyed in the blaze. These oaks were planted during Louis XIV’s reign (1643–1715), when the famed Sun King was working to expand his navy and needed wood for his ships’ masts. Eight of the largest trees were taken from the forests of Bercé, in France’s Loire region. Planners scoured France’s forests with drones to spot tall-enough trees with few deformities, reports Saskya Vandoorne for CNN.
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we are happy the entire industry-from foresters to sawyers-is mobilized to meet this challenge,” Michel Druilhe, president of France Bois Forêt, a national professional network for forestry, tells the AP. “Given the place occupied by the cathedral in the hearts of the French, in the history of France and the world. As Kim Willsher reported for the Guardianin February, the trees needed to be chopped down by the end of March, before their sap rose, to prevent humidity in the wood. Public and private forests from every corner of France contributed roughly 150- to 200-year-old oaks that were selected through a painstaking process in January and February of this year, per the AP. Ultimately, however, the French government agreed to rebuild Notre-Dame’s iconic spire “ exactly as it was.” Now, with the time-consuming process of authentic reconstruction well underway, the government is taking a major-and somewhat controversial-step: cutting down 1,000 historic oak trees in more than 200 forests across the country, as Thomas Adamson and Nicolas Garriga report for the Associated Press (AP). One envisioned a structure made from recycled ocean plastic, while another suggested that the roof be converted into a cross-shaped swimming pool.
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After a devastating fire destroyed much of the roof and iconic Gothic spire of Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral in April 2019, architects from around the world proposed an array of ideas for how to rebuild.
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