In April 2019, the world watched as Notre Dame Cathedral burned and flames fuelled by the ribbed roof – made of hundreds of oak beams, some dating from the 13th century – roared into the sky.
Four years on, the cathedral in Paris is rising from the ashes. On Tuesday, the trusses for what will be a new roof constructed from old oaks made their way along the Seine in two big barges. The river was closed to other traffic for the operation.
There were “oohs” from the crowds of tourists as the first of six wooden triangles weighing seven tonnes each were lifted slowly by crane into the azure and cloudless sky to the cathedral roof. The pieces will be fitted together like a giant puzzle within the next two months.
The reconstruction of the wooden structure, historically known as la forêt (the forest) because of its size and density, marks a symbolic step in the rebirth of the cathedral, one of Paris’s emblematic landmarks.
“It’s amazing to see. What a fabulous building, even covered in scaffold,” said Jake, who was on holiday with his family.
The forêt formed the cross-shaped roof that ran the length of the nave and transept above stone vaults. A total of 25 triangular structures 10 metres high and 14 metres across the base make up part of the cathedral’s charpente – its essential framework, created from ancient oaks that have been hand-cut to size and shape using the kind of forged axes employed by medieval carpenters.
The 96-metre-high spire, added in 1859 by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, is also being reconstructed as it was, allaying fears of what the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had called a “contemporary gesture” being incorporated, along with other far-fetched schemes to turn the roof into a park or swimming pool.
After the conflagration, officials said the cathedral, Unesco-listed as a world treasure and immortalised in Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, had been within 15-30 minutes of complete destruction.
Firefighters battled for 15 hours to stop the flames reaching the wooden frame of the gothic towers on the west facade. Had it burned, there were real fears it would have brought the bells, the largest of which rang at the crowning of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and weighs 13 tonnes, crashing down, bringing the towers with them. A large swathe of central Paris was contaminated with lead dust from the building’s destroyed roof.
In the hours after the fire, Macron pledged that the 850-year-old cathedral would be rebuilt by 2024. To ensure this, he put a retired military officer, Gen Jean-Louis Georgelin, a former chief-of-staff to the Élysée under Jacques Chirac, in charge of the project. The cause of the blaze is still not known.
Tuesday’s operation roused emotion in Parisiens such as Bernadette who watched the cathedral burn four years ago. “It’s moving to see the first elements of the roof coming together. I’m glad it’s being rebuilt exactly as it was. I really wasn’t sure about Mr Macron’s contemporary gesture,” she said.
Jean-Louis Bidet, the technical director of the Perrault atélier in Normandy, which has been rebuilding the roof frame, had earlier said the pieces of la forêt had been put together “as if they were in their permanent position at the top of the walls of Notre Dame” in a trial run at the company workshop several weeks ago. “We assembled them to verify they were as they should be,” Bidet told French television.
The area around the cathedral has been completely reimagined by a Belgian landscape architect, Bas Smets, who told the Guardian last year that he aimed to create a more open and pedestrian-friendly space in the 4,500 sq metres around the cathedral. The €50m cost of landscaping is being financed by Paris City Hall.
