PARIS: As the mighty Notre Dame cathedral prepares to reopen its doors in a month’s time after a devastating fire in 2019, a look back at five key dates in the Paris landmark’s colourful history:
1160: first stones laid
Building the world-famous cathedral in the heart of the French capital began in 1160 and was not completed until almost a century later.
The project was spearheaded by the ambitious Bishop of Paris Maurice de Sully and had several striking features including vaults that reached up to 32 metres (105 feet), according to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE in 2023.
But some elements of the gothic building’s construction remain unknown, centuries later.
It is not clear, for example, how the builders “dared – and succeeded – in putting up such thin walls to such a height,” Maxime L’Heritier, an archaeologist at University Paris 8 told AFP in an interview in 2023.
1455: Joan of Arc
Burnt on a stake in a public square after being accused of heresy, the case of Joan of Arc has become legend in France.
In 1455, 24 years after her dramatic death at the age of around 19, a fresh trial opened to reconsider her case, taking place at Notre Dame.
It concluded the verdict of Joan as a heretic had been arbitrary, paving the way for a second trial in Rouen, the original site of her public execution.
In 1456 her sentence was ruled null and void, elevating her to the status of French heroine – and centuries later, a saint.
1790s: one-time wine cellar
During the French Revolution, the cathedral was plundered and seized as public property.
Anti-clerical radicals attacked the facade, removing biblical statues and decapitating them in the cathedral’s square, in acts reminiscent of the guillotining of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.
Over a few years in the 1790s, Notre Dame was used for a variety of purposes, including storing barrels of wine for the Revolutionary Army.
1831: Victor Hugo novel
Published in 1831, Victor Hugo’s novel ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ featured a host of colourful characters from the gypsy Esmeralda to Quasimodo, but at the centre was the cathedral.
The book was a huge hit and triggered an outpouring of emotion among Parisians over the state of disrepair into which the cathedral had fallen.
This popular enthusiasm contributed to an ambitious restoration project launched in 1844 and led by the architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc.
Lasting till 1865, it included the construction of a new spire, which had been dismantled during the Revolution.
2019: inferno on the Seine
The spire was among the features of the cathedral that collapsed in the blaze that shocked the world on April 15, 2019.
Onlookers on the banks of the Seine watched in horror as the fire ravaged not only the spire, which crashed down, but also caused the central frame to collapse, engulfed the clock and part of the vault.
The cause of the blaze is not known, with an electrical fault or a cigarette among the theories.
It took 400 firefighters several hours to control the flames; stained glass windows, towers, bells and most artworks and relics survived.
The renovated Notre-Dame is set to reopen on December 8, 2024.
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