Notre-Dame Reopens ‘More Beautiful Than Before’

When Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral reopens to the public on Sunday, the world’s most-visited church will have been restored to almost exactly its form before a devastating 2019 fire. But it won’t look quite the same.

“There’s now a feeling that it’s just been built,” said Henri Chalet, director of Notre-Dame’s four choirs, who visited the church for a rehearsal as part of preparations for a series of grand events this weekend. Stone that had been darkened by years of pollution and visitor grime now has a pristine sparkle, woodwork gleams and paintings have been scrubbed and rediscovered.

“There are colors all around that one couldn’t have ever imagined,” said Chalet. “It’s magical to think that our home will be re-opened and be even more beautiful than before.”

This unexpected dazzle is just one feature of one of history’s most remarkable restorations. In 2019, as Notre-Dame’s spire crashed down in flames, it seemed almost impossible to imagine the early gothic masterpiece ever recovering. Just five years later, this church which lies at the both the geographical and symbolic heart of Paris — and arguably of France itself — has effectively risen from the dead.

The church’s condition is immaculate and singularly faithful to its pre-fire self, following a huge effort that has harnessed the wealth of its country’s business elite and the uncompromising expertise of France’s craftspeople. In time, the fire might even end up being just one more chapter in the life of a building that — despite its antique appearance — has always been less a relic than a work in progress, with a long history of being re-shaped, extended, battered, neglected and revived.

The emotional outpouring following the fire triggered record donations. Within hours of the blaze, luxury-goods billionaire Francois Pinault and his family promised €100 million for the reconstruction. They were quickly followed by LVMH founder and industry rival Bernard Arnault, who raised the ante to €200 million, and the Bettencourt Meyers, heirs behind cosmetics giant L’Oreal SA, who matched it. Taken together the cash gifted reached €846 million, also joined by donations in kind of materials and services such as catering.

So lavish was the sum collected that it far exceeded the restoration’s actual cost of around €700 million, leaving ample funds remaining for additional work on the undamaged exterior and the cathedral’s immediate surroundings.

The ensuing renovation hasn’t been without controversy. During the early stages, the state auditor uncovered a lack of budget control and spending transparency, as well as attempts by donors to meddle in decisions. President Emmanuel Macron’s desire for a new, contemporary spire was shot down, and debate is still raging over the future style of some stained-glass windows.

The time pressure created by Macron’s insistence on a five-year completion has ultimately helped forge consensus. Indeed, this need for swift united action may have helped to dismiss calls for a more creative approach in favor of an exacting re-creation of the 1859 version by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

Macron will try to use the reopening to bolster his increasingly weak political standing and claim the restoration as his architectural stamp on Paris, in line with a tradition of monument-building by past presidents.

The level of attention to detail that putting the church back together has required is astounding. Just to keep the building stable during work, for example, restorers built 28 bespoke arches out of larchwood — each one different, each one weighing eight tons — to temporarily support Notre-Dame’s flying buttresses.

To repair the roof and fittings, 2,000 oaks had to be felled — and with some urgency straight after the fire, to give them time to dry before use. Copper statues luckily removed for restoration just before the fire hit were not just restored, but treated by a team of “patinators” to give them the correct dark brown patina they show in 19th century photos.

Even repairing the damaged grand organ was a labor of love — it was shipped whole to southern France where its sixteen internal bellows were replaced using the same materials as the originals: sheepskin and animal glue.

Notre-Dame’s roof and spire were perhaps the restoration’s greatest achievement. As its structure is hidden from view, it might have been tempting to rebuild this using a modern system. Notre-Dame’s restorers, however, have replaced like with like — recreating not just the roof as it was but using a distinctively French technique that dates back over 800 years. “Scribing” — Trait de Charpente in French — is a process so skilled and painstaking that it has been inscribed by Unesco as part of the world’s intangible cultural heritage.

The work required an unusual degree of collaboration, according to Julien Le Bras, head of restoration firm Le Bras Freres. “Four companies from all over France that are normally competitors came together for this challenge,'' he said. “We united our savoir-faire, putting aside our differences and our rivalries.”

Even with those resources, the project was a race against time. “I was still working until yesterday to do a little fine cleaning,” marble floor restorer Olivia Salaün said at an event one week before opening. “It was very moving when all the protective covers were removed by the different teams and we could see our marble floor become part of the whole.”

Given the incredible fidelity of the restoration, it can be tempting to see the latest version of Notre-Dame as a resurrected time capsule from the Middle Ages. The reality, however, is that Paris has known many Notre-Dames throughout its history.

Since its first stone was laid in 1163, the cathedral has always remained a work in progress, shaped and reshaped like a text full of additions and corrections. Notre-Dame was barely roofed before its upper windows were doubled in size in the early 1200s to let in more light, following the model of newer, even more technically daring cathedrals such as those of Chartres and Reims. The famous rose windows were also afterthoughts added as part of extended porches.

The church’s architecture fell out of fashion in the Renaissance — the term “gothic” assigned to its style was originally intended as a slur — provoking successive generations to adapt Notre-Dame by removing stained glass and gargoyles, and adding tapestries, whitewash and neoclassical cladding. Looking at Jacques-Louis David’s famous 1807 painting of Napoleon’s coronation at Notre-Dame, the church’s interior has been so altered with neoclassical marble as to be unrecognizable.

Even this was less drastic than Notre-Dame’s brief conversion a few years prior during the revolution to a “Temple of Reason,” an atheist cult that was quickly (and just as briefly) replaced by a deistic Cult of the Supreme Being before Notre-Dame was reconverted to Catholic worship. Understandably, Notre-Dame arrived in the mid-19th century so dilapidated that its demolition was openly discussed.

The phenomenon that saved the ancient church was, ironically enough, decidedly modern: Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris, which arrived during a period when cheaper mass publishing had effectively created the modern bestseller. Better known in English as the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the novel’s huge success in celebrating the cathedral’s architecture ultimately created momentum for a massive restoration at the hands of then-star restorer and architect Viollet-le-Duc.

This renovation added yet another layer of paradox to the church’s apparently ancient appearance. Many of the features for which Notre-Dame is now famous — such as its expressive gargoyles and spire — were actually added by Viollet-le-Duc, replacing disappeared medieval originals with approximations devised, with undeniable skill, by the restorer himself.

Notre-Dame’s spectacular restoration as a patchwork of old and new is thus part of a long tradition. While a few components that were destroyed have been replaced with new designs — such as the golden cockerel atop the church’s spire — the project has also rekindled connections with the crafts of the past in a way that might delight traditionalists.

“Our work is authentically 13th century because we used the same building techniques,” Rémi Fromont, one of the project’s chief architects, said during a media event, displaying a model of an axe reproduced specially for the job. “Technically, this is what is best.”