BREAKING NEWS!! NOTRE-DAME of PARIS is ON FIRE!

Plans to modernise the visitor experience at Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral have been criticised by traditionalists who fear the monument is set to become a “politically correct Disneyland”.

Though the building is not set to reopen to the public until 2024, plans announced by Paris’s Archbishop and the Canon of Notre Dame to update the tourist experience are already causing furious debate.

The 800-year-old cathedral is being restored after a major fire damaged the building in April 2019.

A team led by the Archbishop of Paris, Michael Aupetit, has proposed a modern, art-installation style interior experience that would involve information projected onto walls in Mandarin, meditation spaces and an “initiation trail” for visitors.

Paris-based architect Maurice Culot voiced his objections to The Telegraph, comparing the modern additions to Disneyland.

“It’s as if Disney were entering Notre Dame,” said Culot, who has seen the renovation plans.

“What they are proposing to do to Notre Dame would never be done to Westminster Abbey or St Peter’s in Rome,” he added.

The Spectator columnist Harry Mount also reached for the US mega-theme-parks in his comparison, calling plans for “emotional spaces” and a “discovery trail” a “politically correct Disneyland”.

However, the cathedral’s Canon, Gilles Drouin, has argued that a modernised visitor trail, with Bible quotes and a religious narrative translated into languages such as Mandarin and Swedish, will open up the monument for tourists “who are not always from a Christian culture” and make it accessible to all.

Speaking to Agence France-Presse, Drouin said: “Chinese visitors may not necessarily understand the Nativity.”

Drouin reassured detractors that the physical restoration will remain true to the building’s 19th-century remodelling by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, but emphasised that the interior experience should move with the times.

He said officials had learned from past experience that Chinese visitors would stop and light candles in Notre Dame when there were signs with information in Mandarin.

Of the physical changes, Drouin said the new-look interior will see a mix of artistic exhibits, with “portraits from the 16th and 18th century… in dialogue with modern art objects”, as well as “a cycle of tapestries”.

There will be a “discovery path going from north to south, from the shadow to the light”, with key Bible stories translated into multiple languages along the way.

After the reopening, tourists will also enter from the large central door, rather than the side entrances as was the case previously.

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As well as the tombs, elements of painted sculptures were found just beneath the current floor level of the cathedral, identified as parts of the original 13th-century rood screen – an architectural element separating the altar area from the nave.
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The discoveries were made as reconstruction teams checked the stability of the ground, ahead of installing scaffolding to rebuild the spire.

In the process, they discovered an underground heating system from the 19th century, with the sarcophagus lying among its brick pipes.

Despite the excitement of the find, the clock is ticking for the archaeologists.

They have been given until 25 March to finish their work before the reconstruction project resumes, in order to keep to a planned reopening of the cathedral in 2024.

but every once in a while I feel sad about the disturbance of old gravesites

Veteran French director Jean-Jacques Annaud serves up some high-octane film-making with this old-fashioned disaster movie, composed in a docu-realist style, about the catastrophic fire that engulfed Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral in 2019. With dramatic reconstructions, digital effects and the splicing in of amateur video, social media material and genuine news footage – President Macron himself appears at one stage to be talking to an actor playing the fire chief – Annaud rips a pretty swashbuckling adventure from the headlines. A terrifying blaze, flying buttresses about to collapse and molten lead pouring from the roof on to the believers below; and Annaud cheekily intersperses the thrills with a querulous old lady who keeps calling the fire brigade because her kitten has got out on to the roof: France has, as they say, picked the wrong day to quit smoking.

There are some startling scenes, all apparently accurate, showing cathedral officials desperately trying to rescue the most precious possessions: the Crown of Thorns, a vial of Christ’s blood, a fragment of the true cross and a nail from the crucifixion. And no one even murmurs the possibility that these are medieval artefacts. As far as these people are concerned: these are the real thing, and this glassy-eyed belief in their authenticity, and the ecstasy at their deliverance, is somehow more important than issues around the incompetence that caused the fire in the first place: it gives the film a slightly reactionary sheen.

That’s not to say it isn’t perfectly watchable and it gives us in the UK food for thought. How long before the Houses of Parliament go up in flames in exactly the same way?

Notre Dame on Fire is released on 22 July in cinemas.

Abstract

The study of iron reinforcements used in the construction of Notre-Dame de Paris offers a glimpse into the innovation that took place on this building site in the mid-12th century, adapting metal to create a novel architecture. The restoration of the monument after the 2019 fire offered unique possibilities to investigate its iron armatures and to sample 12 iron staples from different locations (tribunes, nave aisles and upper walls). Six of them were dated thanks to the development of an innovative methodology based on radiocarbon dating. They reveal that Notre-Dame is the first known Gothic cathedral where iron was massively used as a proper construction material to bind stones throughout its entire construction, leading to a better understanding of the master masons’ thinking. Moreover, a metallographic study and slag inclusion chemical analyses of the staples provide the first study of iron supply for a great medieval Parisian building yard, renewing our understanding of iron circulation, trade and forging in the 12th and 13th century capital of the French kingdom. The highlighting of numerous welds in all iron staples and the multiple provenances sheds light on the activity of the iron market in this major medieval European city and the nature of the goods that circulated, and questions the possible importance of recycling.

Workers across France are rushing to restore various parts of Notre Dame Cathedral, with a goal to reopen the site in Paris in December 2024 — five years after a destructive fire.

The French army general appointed by Emmanuel Macron to oversee the reconstruction of the fire-ravaged Notre-Dame Cathedral has died while hiking in the Pyrénées.

Mountain gendarmes discovered the body of Jean-Louis Georgelin, 74, the former chief of the defence staff, after he failed to return to a mountain refuge on Friday.

He is believed to have fallen on Mount Valier, near the Faustin pass in the Ariège, south-east France, at an altitude of 2,650 metres.

The public prosecutor’s office in Foix confirmed on Saturday the body had been formally identified and that the death was being treated as an accident.

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The installation by a crane of a new golden rooster on Notre Dame, reimagined as a dramatic phoenix with licking, flamed feathers, goes beyond being just a weathervane atop the cathedral spire.

It symbolises resilience amid destruction after the devastating April 2019 fire – as restoration officials also revealed an anti-fire misting system is being kitted out under the cathedral’s roof.

Chief architect Philippe Villeneuve, who designed the new rooster, said that the original’s survival signified a ray of light in the catastrophe.

“That there was hope, that not everything was lost. The beauty of the (old) battered rooster … expressed the cry of the cathedral suffering in flames,” Villeneuve said. He described the new work of art, approximately half a metre long and gleaming in the December sun behind Notre Dame Cathedral, as his “phoenix”.

Villeneuve elaborated on the new rooster’s significance, saying: “Since [the fire] we have worked on this rooster [the] successor, which sees the flame carried to the top of the cathedral as it was before, more than 96 metres from the ground … It is a fire of resurrection.”

In lighthearted comments, the architect said that the process of design was so intense he might have to speak to his therapist about it.

Before ascending to its perch, the rooster – a French emblem of vigilance and Christ’s resurrection – was blessed by Paris Archbishop Laurent Ulrich in a square behind the monument. The rooster – or in French – is an emotive national emblem for the French because of the word’s semantics – the Latin word gallus means both Gaul and rooster.

Ulrich placed sacred relics in a hole inside the rooster’s breast, including fragments of Christ’s Crown of Thorns and remains of St Denis and St Genevieve, infusing the sculpture with religious importance.

The Crown of Thorns, regarded as Notre Dame’s most sacred relic, was among the treasures quickly removed after the fire broke out. Brought to Paris by King Louis IX in the 13th century, it is purported to have been pressed on to Christ’s head during the crucifixion.

A sealed tube was also placed in the sculpture containing a list of the names of nearly 2,000 individuals who contributed to the cathedral’s reconstruction, underscoring the collective effort behind the works.

Notre Dame’s new restoration chief, Philippe Jost, detailed pioneering measures taken to safeguard the cathedral against
future fires in comments to the press.

“We have deployed a range of fire protection devices, some of which are very innovative in a cathedral, including a misting system in the attics, where the oak frame and in the spire are located,” Jost said. “And this is a first for a cathedral in France.”

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who last week visited the site to mark a one-year countdown to its reopening, announced that the original rooster will be displayed in a new museum at the Hôtel-Dieu.

This move, along with plans to invite Pope Francis for the cathedral’s reopening next year, highlights Notre Dame’s significance in French history and culture.

The rooster’s installation, crowning a spire reconstructed from Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s 19th-century design, is a poignant reminder of its medieval origins as a symbol of hope and faith.

Its longstanding association with the French nation since the Renaissance further adds to its historical and cultural significance, marking a new chapter of renewal and hope for Notre Dame and the French people.