Notre-Dame-de-Paris goes “forest” – Newspaper Kommersant No. 31 (7476) of 20.02.2023

A little more than a year is left before the return of the Gothic cathedral to life. Already on April 16, 2024, “Te Deum” will sound under its vaults to the glory of God and the people who saved the famous monument. In the meantime, the exhibition “Notre Dame de Paris, from builders to restorers” has opened in the hall of the Cite de l’Architecture museum in Paris. The correspondent of Kommersant in France admired the courage of the idea Alexey Tarkhanov.

At the Cite de l’Architecture, it feels like you’re in an in situ exhibition of contemporary art in an old museum, with works by contemporary artists hidden between classical exhibits. This time, in a long gallery of museum reconstructions, real details related to the recent history of Notre Dame de Paris appear among life-sized recreated Gothic portals. The firebrand of a burnt beam, the stones of a collapsed middle cross, a charred capital. In a funny way, against the background of details of church architecture, natural white underpants, boots and a helmet are exhibited – this is the protection worn by workers who sorted out the rubble after the fire, so as not to suffer either from stones falling from a 20-meter height of the vault, or from lead fumes from the melted roof.

The catastrophe on the night of April 16, 2019, which terrified the world, did not destroy the monument. Parisian firefighters managed to defend him. The walls and stained-glass windows miraculously survived. The sculptures of saints that surrounded the collapsed spire remained in complete safety – long before the fire they were removed for restoration, in all their beauty they stand in the halls of the Cite de l’Architecture.

How terrible was the spectacle that appeared before the restorers, shows a huge photographic scroll, unfolded from ceiling to floor at the entrance to the exhibition. But the fact that Paris was still lucky is evidenced by the copper cockerel displayed in the window, which adorned the needle of the burnt tower, from which it fluttered almost unscathed.

The spire of the cathedral, erected in the 19th century by the architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, and the roof of the nave, 100 meters long and 10 meters high, were irretrievably lost. It was based on an incredible 300-ton oak beam structure, woven in the 12th century, remodeled in the 17th century, and standing up to the beginning of the 21st century without any serious signs of fatigue. For the fantastic complexity of the design, it was called the “forest”.

The task of the restoration is to re-grow this “forest” over the repaired and reinforced stone vault. Fortunately, all drawings and accurate measurements have been preserved from the 19th century, supplemented by field surveys in 2013. After the fire, there were proposals to use modern materials for restoration. But they were quickly abandoned and they began to look for wood and craftsmen who could restore the structure, using the same tools and techniques that were in the arsenal of carpenters in the Middle Ages. At that time, the saw was almost never used in construction, whole trees with a diameter of 25–50 centimeters and a length of 12–15 meters were brought to the site, and then they were hewn with axes, which sealed the wood pores and protected the structure from moisture.

As it turned out, the French forests are still rich in timber of exceptional quality. More than 1.5 thousand oaks were selected throughout the country, meeting the most stringent requirements: size, harmony, absence of knots or frost marks. Trees were taken in Ile-de-France, Alsace, Sarthe, Ardennes, Aquitaine, around Reims, Brittany, in the famous forests of Chandelet in Maine-et-Loire and Loches in Indre-et-Loire. The provinces seemed to be competing in who would give the most generous gift to the main cathedral of France. There were also carpentry workshops working the old fashioned way: Le Bras in Meuse, Asselin in Deux-Sèvres, Cruard in Mayenne, Les Metiers du bois in Paris. Samples of new wood with carpenter’s axes (in ancient geometry, but modern design and steel) are one of the not the most noticeable, but very important exhibits of the exhibition.

In the video that plays at the exhibition, the restorers of Notre Dame let slip that “the fire contributed a lot to her decoration.” Architects, archaeologists, builders, pitying the “old Parisian lady”, rejoice at the opportunity to understand and restore the most complex structure, in which one is connected to the other so elegantly and firmly that it is difficult to calculate even in a computer model.

Scientists got an incredible opportunity to examine and feel all corners of the cathedral. Scaffolding erected along the walls revealed areas that the human hand had not touched for almost seven centuries. Fragments of the ancient coloring of the vaults, paintings of different times were found, the glass of the Gothic “roses” was cleared, which completely survived the night of the disaster. As the chief architect Philippe Villeneuve promises to all visitors of the exhibition, with all the accuracy of the restoration, we will not recognize Notre Dame. The color of the cleaned walls, the amount of light passing through the stained-glass windows, and the purity of their colors will also change. In fact, the cathedral has not ceased to change since the XIII century. Generations of craftsmen worked on the ongoing construction, changes and restorations followed one after another. Royal decorations under Louis XIV and destruction under the sans-culottes, cosmetics under Napoleon I and the free fantasy of the 19th century, which recreated the appearance of the cathedral as we used to see it. And now the post-fire Notre Dame. In a sense, modern masters simply continued the Gothic tradition – in constant service to the symbol of French culture.