In 2019, a massive fire broke out at Notre-Dame Cathedral, destroying its iconic spire, wooden roof structure and upper walls, alongside other major damage. While the causes for the blaze haven’t been entirely elucidated, initial shock was followed by a firm resolve among the French government, heritage bodies and donors to undertake massive repair and restoration efforts. Notre-Dame would be brought back from the edge of catastrophe.
The goal was to complete these within five years— a herculean endeavor even in “normal” times. Astoundingly, it will largely be met, despite the Covid-19 pandemic slowing things down considerably: on December 8th, the Cathedral will mostly re-open to the public.
Ahead of the initial re-opening, I wanted to better understand the renovations in historical context, and to get a clearer sense of their importance. So I decided to enlist the insight of an architectural historian named Lindsay Cook to help shed light on this and a few other questions. I hope you enjoy listening to our brief but fascinating conversation, in which Professor Cook describes the recent revival of France’s most-famous cathedral as “just amazing”.
What follows is a transcript that has been edited for clarity and ease of reading.
CT: I'm thrilled to be chatting today with Lindsay Cook. She's an Assistant Teaching Professor of Architectural History at Penn State University, as well as a researcher and author who's written extensively on topics including Gothic architecture and the medieval world. She's notably an expert on the history of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, and she's published several articles and book chapters on this very topic. She translated a fascinating book that initially appeared in French and whose English language title is Notre-Dame Cathedral: Nine Centuries of History. It was published in 2020.
And we're lucky enough to have Professor Cook here with us today to talk about the recent renovations at Notre-Dame following the catastrophic fire there in 2019, which destroyed its famous spire, upper walls and roof, and also caused a lot of damage elsewhere. She's going to give us an expert’s insight into what these massive renovations and repairs mean as part of Notre-Dame's long history, which stretches back more than 850 years. And this is something I think is really important to understand, especially since the cathedral is expected to mostly reopen to the public this December, after five years of what seemed like Herculean efforts to bring it back from the damage caused by the fire. So I think this is a perfect time, really, to take a closer look at all this. Thanks so much for being with us today, Professor Cook.
LC: Thank you, Courtney, it's a pleasure to be with you.
CT: Great. So would you mind just briefly telling us a little bit more about you and the work you've done as a scholar and a researcher in relation to Notre-Dame, and its long history-- obviously, with a shorter account of it here.
LC: Of course. So I've been a specialist of Notre-Dame of Paris: I wrote my [PhD] dissertation about Notre-Dame of Paris and its relationship to a group of other buildings in the Paris region. And I suppose the fire really transformed the way I understand those relationships, those medieval relationships between different buildings, and has also affected the way that I think about Notre-Dame's status in history. So I'm particularly interested in, for example, kind of the image of Notre-Dame, the elements of the Cathedral that are-- kind of [the] smallest number of features, for example, that you would need to see in order to know that you're looking at Notre-Dame Cathedral and in Paris, and not any other building from the medieval world. And I'm also interested in responses to the cathedral. So I would say the fire in particular, really transformed the way that I see my research in medieval and architectural history, because I realize that this is a building that people have responded to very deliberately over the centuries, including in the 20th century and 21st century, even since the fire itself.
CT: Right. And so you're someone who's a real expert on the cathedral, unlike someone like me, a real laywoman. And I'm just wondering how excited or not are you about these renovation efforts, which are really massive, you know, five-year repair and renovation. How big a deal is it really, from a historical standpoint, that they're undertaking these renovations, and have hired such a sort of a massive troop of, you know, masons and architectural scholars and a host of others to get Notre-Dame back to, maybe not where she was before the fire, but nearly. How do we put it into a larger context?
I think it's been just amazing. I think we haven't seen anything anywhere like it, or anything like it since the 1840s to 1860s restoration by [Eugene] Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus-- and I think even if we take an even longer view, we might even think back to the installation of a new roof in the 13th century. There had been a roof previously in the 12th century, in the late 12th century building, and I even think all the way back to that time period when the cathedral was being really radically transformed, in the 13th century-- at a time when in a lot of other places, you might have decided that the cathedral was complete. And so I look at this transformation in the light of those two historical examples. So if you think about the fact that [only] three times in history, has there been such a dramatic transformation to the cathedral-- it's really very important, what's happened in the last five years.
CT: Wow, thank you. That was a really, beautifully succinct way of condensing a very complex history. Because you brought up good old Viollet-le-Duc-- for those who are not familiar, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was the architect who famously, as Dr Cook said, renovated the cathedral in the 19th century. And one of the things I wanted to bring up here is [that] it was, it was Viollet-le-Duc, from what I understand (right, Professor Cook?) who is responsible for the flamboyant spire, which sadly perished in the fire. And I was a little bit curious about why they persisted in wanting to restore that spire, because it seems quite delicate. And I understand that-- apparently a similar spire had been toppled in the wind prior to this incident [NB: The original 13th-century spire was actually damaged and nearly collapsed in a wind storm in the mid-18th century, and was subsequently removed] . So why did they keep building that flimsy spire? What is your take on this?
LC: It's interesting. So in the case of Notre-Dame, the Cathedral has had a spire since the Middle Ages: not at the very sort of earliest iteration of the cathedral, but certainly by this major transformation I was talking about, of the 13th century-- it did have a spire at that point. And it's true that the one that caught fire in 2019 was not the same one is that original spire….It was in the 18th century that it was decided that it should be taken down and dismantled, and so that was done in this very deliberate way. You're right that lots of other spires have had, you know, similar fates, or it's true that, you know, wind storms have caused significant damage, and that's one of the reasons why Viollet-le-Duc-- his spire that he designed around 1857 shortly after his partner, or senior partner, Lassus, died-- that one was very deliberately designed in order to be heavier, stronger, and especially to be able to sort of confront these, this sort of wind-loading that spires particularly are confronted with-- so that's one of the reasons that it's more massive and taller.
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I think the answer to the question you're asking, though, is a kind of bigger picture kind of thing, which is that this spire, at this point, Viollet-le-Duc's in particular: that particular spire was part of the building that had become known the world over. That was the building that people, you know, something on the order of 13 million people before the fire, visited each year, and so that spire constituted part of the image of Notre-Dame. So for that reason, I think …. it makes just as much sense to put this back together as the rest of the building that was damaged. Even though it's true [that] Gothic cathedrals are precarious in some ways, and so that's one of the reasons that they have made such an effort to safeguard it for the future, right?
CT: Great. And I guess when you say that, you know, 13 million people, did you say? per year flocked there before the fire? Right? Yeah, that that number of people who were flocking to see the cathedral-- and that the Flamboyant Gothic spire is very much a part of the identity, the visual identity, of Notre-Dame. And this might explain, for instance, why they didn't take on some pretty quirky proposals for the spire. For instance, I believe there was a proposal for the crystal maker Baccarat to create a crystal spire, which would have been a pretty interesting way to transform the skyline of Paris. What did you think of that?
LC: Well, so I think you're referring to-- there were many different proposals that were, I would say unsolicited proposals [to rebuild the Cathedral]. And it's true that there was a debate shortly after the fire. President Macron in particular, was interested in having an international architectural competition that would have incorporated what he was referring to as a "contemporary gesture," incorporating a contemporary architectural "gesture" into the restored cathedral. And pretty much immediately, I would say, the kind of not only architectural establishment, but especially those who are concerned with the restoration of cathedrals-- there's been a bureaucracy [in France] devoted to that since Viollet-le-Duc's era. There was a pretty immediate reaction to that idea. And so very quickly, really, [and] already by the summer of 2019 it was clear that that wouldn't be happening.
To me, I see that as, you know, speaking also to this kind of reception of the cathedral, and just speaking to how much people care about it, that architects around the world and other designers around the world were interested in putting their stamp on Notre-Dame. But the reality is, none of that ever got very far. Quite quickly, it was clear that it was going to be rebuilt identically, instead of incorporating something that was, at least on the surface, very overtly, a work of contemporary architecture.
I would also say, though, that the seeing the project unfold over the last five years, and seeing the many contemporary companies using contemporary workers to work in this more traditional way, I see this also as, in the end, being an example of a contemporary architectural project, if anything-- using all of the technology that's been used in the last five years to restore the cathedral identically, has been absolutely a contemporary project. We didn't have this kind of data in the 19th century, when the cathedral was being restored so dramatically the last time. And so to me, it may look traditional, it may look medieval in a lot of ways, and Gothic Revival in other ways. But at the same time, I think it's also been a contemporary project.
CT: Hmm. That's a really interesting way to put it, to really show that contemporary technology is one of the things that make it absolutely possible to reconstruct it, and that kind of brings me to one of the points I wanted us to touch on, which is the really moving story of someone named Andre Tallon--I don't actually know whether he pronounced his name in the French way or if I'm just Frenchifying it?
LC: It’s Andrew Tallon— He's American. He's from the Midwest.
[NB: Despite Professor Cook’s correction, I somehow persisted in both mis-saying and pronouncing Tallon’s name in my response, which was a rather glaring mistake on my part. I have corrected it in the transcript— and apologize].
CT: Andrew Tallon-- okay, there you go. That's what living in France for too many years does. It could be a French name though, you have to admit. So, Andrew Tallon was somebody who used 3D lasers, if I understand correctly, to map the entire cathedral and thus create a way for, you know, the restoration efforts to reconstruct it very precisely. And he was also the co-author of a book, the same book on the history of Notre-Dame that you ended up translating into English a few years ago.
He very sadly died of cancer in 2018, which I was so sorry to hear. And so he didn't live to see how profoundly his work would really end up impacting the restoration efforts at Notre-Dame. I just wanted to know, because I know that he, from what I understand, was your mentor and colleague. What do you think his legacy in all this means, and what does it mean to you personally?
LC: Andrew Tallon was my undergraduate teacher, and then ultimately, you know, remained a mentor, as I myself became a professional architectural historian, and his impact on my life is-- is extremely profound. But I think what many people have realized is just [sic] how important this particular documentation that he made in 2010 ended up being since the fire. I think one of the most remarkable things is that there hadn't been this kind of documentation made before his scan. There was another scan made after his, just focusing on the roof structure. And so it was those two scans kind of put together that the CNRS [National Center for Scientific Research] in Paris ended up being able to use, to kind of reconstitute, use as a model that could serve as the basis for a lot of the architects and sort of companies, drawings and plans.
I think it is kind of astonishing. I think the reality is that without it, it would have been very much less likely....that this restoration would have been completed in five years' time. So I think the timeline that was put on this and the pressure, the time pressure, that was kind of instituted when shortly after the fire, the President of the Republic said that he intended to have the cathedral reopen within five years. I think that really put pressure on everyone involved, and this is the thing that made that possible.
And so I think that that will ultimately be his [Andre Tallon's] legacy in all of this. There's another piece, which is that he was already someone who was, before his death, drawing attention to the fact that-- especially some of the changes that were made in the 19th century, in many cases-- that [were] done using poor quality stone that had been used in the Middle Ages and that, combined with the pollution of the last 150 years, was really putting Notre-Dame in jeopardy. And what he was most concerned about were things like the flying buttresses and other elements like that, structural elements that he worried might collapse if they weren't attended to, and so the restoration was already underway when the fire happened. And then this much larger restoration that's happened subsequently, I think that those are also things that he very much wanted to see and would be really pleased to know have ultimately come to pass.
CT: Wow. Thank you for that. That really gives some additional depth to this story, which I really found to be sort of a moving piece of the restoration story of Notre-Dame. And, yeah, indeed, what a legacy what a legacy he's left. Wow, wonderful. I'm not going to keep you too long, because I know you're busy, but I just wanted to leave the floor now to, you know, give you time to say anything else you thought that my listeners might want to know about the restoration efforts, either the part of it that you find the most exciting, you know, [or] one of the jobs that's being done that that is really remarkable for our time, or anything else on the history that you think is important to note. I'll just leave you to tell me if you think of anything.
LC: I mean, I think, to my mind, the most dramatic—I was able to see a little bit of this, but the sort of traditional skills, and especially those relating to carpentry, are the ones that I find the most dramatic and the most interesting, just from my own standpoint. So the fact is, the thing that was the most damaged-- the element of the cathedral that was really destroyed by the 2019 fire— was this incredible roof framework that Notre-Dame had had already since the 13th century. And so I think the sort of level of analysis has been done since then, all of the research that has been done with the actual timbers that were recovered from the fire, and also reconstituting that roof structure—to me, is one of the most marvelous aspects of this, one of the most remarkable elements of the restoration project. So I hope that people will sort of see that kind of work and understand that there are still really people who know how to do this today, whether using hand tools or mechanical ones. To me, that's been the major revelation since the fire—to learn more about those roof structures, and also to learn from the tradespeople who have, in many cases, devoted their lives to that particular craft.
To be able to repair this much of the building, this fast, has been really amazing. The other thing I think people will take away when they visit this building for the first time, if they're [there] after the restoration, if they're planning to visit Paris in December or January, and thereafter, it will be a very different building. That's my impression already from visiting the cathedral a few times since the fire—is little by little, it's revealing itself, and I think it will be a completely new building in certain ways. And in other ways, the restoration has, if anything, revealed aspects that we didn't even realize were old until the fire, until the cleaning. So it will be, it will look very different. And on the other hand, I think we'll also learn more about it. I would say, after this restoration project, the brightness of the walls is one thing, but I think it will also reveal a lot of features that were up to this point really invisible, underneath layers and layers of sort of dirt and grime that had accumulated over the centuries. Right?
CT: Would Notre-Dame have been covered in very brightly colored wall painting, sort of like the Sainte-Chapelle in the medieval period? Is this image of the sort of dark walled cathedral an inaccurate one, just as it is for so many other cathedrals?
LC : There's debate about exactly what the walls at Notre-Dame would have looked like. It's clear that there was a certain amount of polychromy on the walls. And a wonderful scholar named Géraldine Victoir, who is a researcher in France-- she's done really incredible research, not only specifically about Notre-Dame, but in general about architectural polychromy.
[According to Dictionary. com, “polychromy” refers to the practice of employing many colors in decoration, as in painting or architecture].
But the reality is, what you're mentioning about the comparison to the Sainte-Chappelle…what you think of, I think, when you walk into the Sainte-Chapelle and see the paintings all over the walls, the kind of fictive curtains, for example, and the heraldry—[the] heraldic emblems that you see all over the interior, that's all a 19th century recreation that doesn't have as much sort of historical grounding. And so what I would say is, what you'll mostly find when you go into Notre-Dame after the restoration, is you will see additional brightly cleaned wall paintings. But those aren't medieval. Those were all designed during the restoration of the 19th century. So Notre-Dame would have had paint on the walls, but it would have been more like kind of picking out architectural features, as opposed to sort of grand narrative cycles and things like that. There were some exceptions. So, for example, there was a kind of late medieval wall painting of the tomb of a bishop in one of the chapels of kind of, you know, selective examples of wall painting, but not quite the kinds of cycles, and, like, vibrantly colored paintings that you'll see, which were very much designed and imagined in the 19th century, right?
CT: Oh, that's interesting. It did occur to me when you were saying that we can expect to see a very different Notre-Dame when it's unveiled to the public for the most part, in December of this year-- it did make me think, well, that's, that's good news, in a sense. Because I think one of the critiques that many people have had, and I myself have had as someone who does believe that cities and buildings should, to some degree, move on with time, is sort of this idea that Paris has tended to cling to its 19th-century identity, whether it's the sort of wide boulevards of, you know, of Haussmann, or, you know, trying to sort of preserve the Notre-Dame that Eugene Viollet-le-Duc restored. So I find it heartening to think that actually, the restoration efforts will bring it into a contemporary period, rather than just try to replicate what the 19th century version of it was.
LC: Indeed.
CT: Wonderful. Well, on that note, I will just thank you so much for chatting with us today and taking time out. And this was a really fascinating conversation. Thank you, Professor Cook.
LC: It was a pleasure.
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