Bourdon Emmanuel will ring the Olympics – Newspaper Kommersant No. 3 (7448) of 01/11/2023

French President Emmanuel Macron arrived on Monday evening at the main temple of Paris, which became a symbol of miraculous salvation after the 2019 fire. Together with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, he met with restorers restoring Notre Dame Cathedral and confirmed that the monument will return to life in 2024 in its historic forms. According to the correspondent of “Kommersant” in France Alexey Tarkhanov.

On January 9, Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is on a state visit to Paris, visited the construction site that turned into Notre Dame Cathedral, which nearly died in a fire on the night of April 16, 2019. Accompanied by architects, restorers and the head of construction, sent by the president to commissar at the construction site, a retired general of the army, the former chief of the General Staff, Jean-Louis Georgelin, he inspected the work and posed for television cameras.

Two years ago, many French people grumbled that the president was rushing things. That he is urging the restorers to finish the work, firstly, by the opening of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, and secondly, during his presidential term. Yesterday, the president responded to the skeptics, partly acknowledging voluntarism, but justifying it with severe necessity. Addressing workers, politicians and journalists, he said: “It was important to set a goal, because hope was reborn. We couldn’t promise people, “You’ll wait fifteen years.”

Reconstruction works, according to construction managers, are going according to plan. This is not so noticeable from the outside, where the work can only be judged by the arrows of construction cranes. But inside the entire space of the cathedral is occupied by forests. The last time the temple looked like this was in the 1860s during the restoration, which was carried out by the French architect, connoisseur of European Gothic and great visionary Eugene Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879). It was in his version that our contemporaries admired the cathedral.

It will return the same way to the city and the world after restoration. Numerous false ideas about turning a world monument of the XII-XIV centuries into an attraction of modern architecture or a historical Disneyland were rejected even at the time of the first work to strengthen the building, which was damaged by fire. The sculptures invented by Viollet-le-Duc and, most importantly, the 96-meter-high fake needle-spire invented by him, which collapsed on the night of the fire, will remain in the cathedral. No one is going to re-edit the famous “Gothic editor”, the additions and changes of the 19th century have become, in turn, the most valuable architectural monument.

The restoration of Notre Dame could be as much of a new take on monuments as the work of firefighters was in April 2019. Robots and special technical equipment were used to extinguish the fire that night, which helped save the building from destruction. Such systems did not exist even in the 20th century; Notre Dame would have been doomed. In the same way, it now became possible to resort to identical materials and construction methods for restoration, in contrast to the restorers of the 19th and 20th centuries, who often used concrete and steel for the main structures, hiding them behind the “historical” decoration. Technologists have learned to improve the properties of ancient materials without changing their appearance. A special type of lead coating will be used for the needle, the roof structure will be recruited from the same wooden trusses as in the Middle Ages, but received special impregnation and fire protection.

The main task for this year remains the restoration of the vault at the intersection of the nave and the transept, where there is still a gaping hole pierced by a fallen spire. The bricklayers will have to lay out the rib vault according to the recipes of the 13th century, while the roof rafters will be erected on the other side: artels of carpenters who own the necessary medieval craft still exist in France. They will repeat the incredible complexity of the construction of the so-called forest, in which the destructive fire originated four years ago. Restorers note the peculiarity of the beginning work: traditionally, carpenters came to the construction site after the masons; this time they will have to act simultaneously, synchronous progress will be controlled by a computer model of the cathedral, created at the beginning of the restoration.

During this year, the spire is supposed to be completed, since modern builders can mount it entirely, they have helicopters and powerful cranes at their disposal. The walls to their full height are cleaned of dust and soot accumulated over the centuries. The preserved and restored stained glass windows promise even more light and color. An old organ, which was saved from the fire, is being restored. On the site and the bells of the cathedral. French journalists were amused by the fact that the oldest, Bourdon Emmanuel, cast in 1686, is the namesake of the current president. The famous brass bass called the French kings on the days of the coronation, celebrated the end of the First World War and the liberation of Paris, and then marked the death of world communism – the fall of the Berlin Wall. If another misfortune does not happen from those for which history has been so generous lately, in 2024 Parisians will come to the cathedral for the first mass worship after the repair. And then Notre Dame will open for tourists, in myriad expected for the Paris Olympics.