Notre-Dame Cathedral to reopen after 2019 fire. It’s not the first time it needed saving

This weekend’s reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris is the culmination of a repair and restoration effort more than five years after it was gutted by a catastrophic fire.

Notre-Dame is one of the Western world’s most recognizable and beloved buildings — but it hasn’t always been that way. After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars at the turn of the 18th century, it was in such a state of disrepair that Paris officials considered demolishing it. 

According to historian Bradley Stephens, it was author Victor Hugo who helped restore both its structure and reputation with his 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris — better known by some by its original English title, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

“Hugo was arguing that the cathedral still had huge symbolic value both for French culture, but also for French national identity,” Stephens, a professor of French Literature at the University of Bristol, told CBC Radio’s Day 6.

Echoes of those arguments could be found in French President Emanuel Macron’s declaration immediately after the April 2019 fire devastated the cathedral, which positioned it as a nation-building exercise to unite the French people.

During the French Revolution, Notre-Dame had suffered several “mutilations,” as Hugo described them. Many of its stained glass windows were smashed or stolen. The metal bells installed in its towers were melted down to be cast into cannons.

“Previously, Parisians were concerned that this cathedral had become quite ugly. You had aesthetic purists who felt that its mix of Romanesque and Gothic styles made it quite irregular, that it wasn’t uniform, it wasn’t in keeping with more neoclassical tastes that have been prevalent in more recent history in France,” Stephens explained. 

“And Hugo says to his readers, ‘No, these are the strengths of the cathedral. The cathedral’s mixture of styles, the fact that it’s been around for so very long testifies to a natural wonder and dynamism, and it also helps bear witness to France’s changing history.'”

Following the blueprint

The novel helped galvanize the small, but growing number of people who shared Hugo’s views. In the early 1840s, King Louis-Phillipe commissioned architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc to oversee the cathedral’s repair and restoration — a project that would take several decades.

Viollet-le-Duc’s work remained the blueprint for the cathedral’s modern restoration, including its now-iconic 19th-century spire.

“He was a genius,” Philippe Villeneuve, the cathedral’s chief architect since 2013, said of Viollet-le-Duc. “My role was to ensure that vision endured.” 

After the fire, Macron made a decree to begin the most ambitious restoration in modern French history — to restore an edifice that took nearly 200 years to build originally, in just five years.

Villeneuve and his team installed cutting-edge fire safety systems in the cathedral to help protect it from future fires or other disasters.

The attic, now divided into three compartments — choir, transept, and nave — features advanced thermal cameras, smoke detectors, and a revolutionary water-misting system.

WATCH | This Montrealer forged medieval axes used to rebuild Notre-Dame cathedral 

Montreal blacksmith forging 12th century tools to rebuild Notre-Dame in Paris

A Montreal blacksmith is forging the same type of tools — axes — that were used to build the original Notre-Dame de Paris. They will be used to help rebuild the cathedral’s roof and spire, which were destroyed in a catastrophic fire in 2019.

Unlike traditional sprinklers, this system releases a fine mist of water droplets designed to extinguish flames while minimizing damage to the fragile wood and stone.

“The mist saturates the air, reducing oxygen levels to smother fires without harming the wood or stone,” Villeneuve explained. “These are the most advanced fire safety systems in any French cathedral. We had to learn from what happened. We owe it to the future.”

The people’s palace

Macron’s announcement to repair the cathedral in just five years sparked unprecedented global support, with donations quickly nearing $1 billion US.

Michel Picaud, president of the Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris charity, said his group’s donor list ballooned from 700 before the fire, to nearly 50,000 after with thousands of them coming from over 60 countries — including hundreds of supporters and donors from Canada.

The charity formed in 2017, to support restoration efforts that had begun shortly before the fire.

Picaud noted that wide support came in large part from people who are interested in Notre-Dame beyond its role as a Catholic place of worship. Some see it as one of France’s most attractive tourist locales. Others respect its place in French political history. Still others drew their fondness from Hugo’s novel and its adaptations, including the 1996 Disney animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Stephens did note that Hugo was irked that his novel was retitled The Hunchback of Notre Dame in English, as it took much of the focus away from the cathedral itself in favour of Quasimodo.

“Of course, Quasimodo is the human figure in the whole story that … appeals to our sense of humanity as this maligned, hunchbacked bell ringer is ostracized by society but demonstrates his kindness and his inner beauty,” he said. 

“Whilst Hugo, of course, wanted that to be integral to the tale he was telling, at the same time, he was concerned that by changing the title and narrowing the focus just onto the hunchback, readers might miss the broader significance of where the cathedral fits in.”

Its importance beyond Catholicism can be traced back to its original construction, according to Agnes Poirier, journalist and author of Notre-Dame: the Soul of France.

“Unlike other gothic cathedrals at the time, the aristocracy and the kings paid quite little towards its construction,” she told The Current‘s Matt Galloway. 

The funding came from various sources including the bishop of Paris, revenue from its fertile farmlands, and donations from the bourgeois, prostitutes and more, making it “the people’s palace,” in Poirer’s words.

Revolutionaries used it for various roles including a polling station and a university, which was notable since the rebels were atheists. 

“After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Notre-Dame chimed and rang for the cartoonists that were killed, although they were fiercely anti-clerical,” Poirer said.

“So she belongs to everyone, and she accepts everyone.”

Stephens says Notre-Dame de Paris’s greatest trials have parallels to France’s own tumultuous history. In the 19th century, Hugo wrote a novel exalting its importance just as people were wrestling with the legacy of the French Revolution.

“Now, in the 21st century, what we have is a historically Catholic and imperial power trying to find its place in a multicultural, multi-religious and post-colonial world at a time when the country is beset with fears about a possible waning international influence as well as growing national discord at home domestically,” said Stephens.

“The importance of Notre-Dame, then, can be to help find common ground, to unify rather than divide.”