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

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.

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.”

Published at Sat, 07 Dec 2024 12:56:46 +0000

Syrian rebels advance on heavily defended key city of Homs

Syrian rebels pressed their lightning advance on Saturday, saying they had seized most of the south, as government forces dug in to defend the key central city of Homs to try to save President Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year rule.

Since the rebels’ sweep into Aleppo a week ago, government defences have crumbled across the country at dizzying speed as insurgents seized a string of major cities and rose up in places where the rebellion had long seemed over.

Besides capturing Aleppo in the north, Hama in the centre and Deir al-Zor in the east, rebels said they have taken southern Quneitra, Deraa and Suweida im the south and advanced to within 50 kilometres of the capital.

Videos on social media released on Saturday showed rebels celebrating, firing in the air, and toppling a statue of former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad in Deraa, the fourth city Assad’s forces lost in a week, highlighting growing rebel momentum.

Government defences were focused on Homs, with state television and Syrian military sources reporting big airstrikes on rebel positions and a wave of reinforcements arriving to dig in around the city.

Meanwhile, the rebels extended their control to almost the entire southwest and said they had captured Sanamayn on the main highway from Damascus to Jordan. The Syrian military said it was repositioning, without acknowledging territorial losses.

The pace of events has stunned Arab capitals and raised fears of a new wave of regional instability, with Qatar saying on Saturday it threatened Syria’s territorial integrity.

Syria’s civil war, which erupted in 2011 as an uprising against Assad’s rule, dragged in big outside powers, created space for jihadist militants to plot attacks around the world and sent millions of refugees into neighbouring states.

Western officials say the Syrian military is in a difficult situation, unable to halt rebel gains and forced into retreat.

Assad had long relied on allies to subdue the rebels, with bombing by Russian warplanes while Iran sent allied forces including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraqi militia to bolster the Syrian military and storm insurgent strongholds.

But Russia has been focused on the war in Ukraine since 2022 and Hezbollah has suffered big losses in its own grueling war with Israel, significantly limiting its ability or that of Iran to bolster Assad.

Russia promises to stop ‘terrorists’

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was doing all it could to stop “terrorists” prevailing in Syria, and called for dialogue between the Damascus government and the legitimate opposition, without saying which groups this included.

Russia has a naval base and airbase in Syria that have not only been important for its support of Assad, but also for its ability to project influence in the Mediterranean and Africa.

Hezbollah sent some “supervising forces” to Homs on Friday but any significant deployment would risk exposure to Israeli airstrikes, Western officials said. Israel attacked two Lebanon-Syria border crossings on Friday, Lebanon said.

Iran-backed Iraqi militias are on high alert, with thousands of heavily armed fighters ready to deploy to Syria, many of them amassed near the border. Iraq does not seek military intervention in Syria, a government spokesperson said on Friday.

Iran, Russia, and Turkey, which is the rebels’ main foreign supporter, discussed the crisis in Doha. Lavrov said they had agreed there should be an immediate end to the fighting.

A top Iranian official, Ali Larijani, met Assad in Damascus on Friday, an Iranian news agency reported a lawmaker as saying. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said “no specific decisions have been made regarding a horizon for Syria’s future.”

Battle for Homs includes airstrikes

The rebels said they were “at the walls” of Homs after taking the last village on its northern outskirts late on Friday.

Inside Homs, a resident said the situation had felt normal until Friday but had grown more tense with airstrikes and gunfire clearly audible and pro-Assad militia groups setting up checkpoints.

“They are sending a message to people to keep in line and that they should not get excited and not expect Homs to go easily,” the resident said.

Seizing Homs, an important crossroads between the capital and the Mediterranean, would cut off Damascus from the coastal stronghold of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, and from a naval base and airbase of his Russian allies there.

A Syrian military officer said there was a lull in fighting on Saturday morning after a night of intense airstrikes on the rebels and that a large convoy of troops and vehicles had redeployed from Palmyra to aid the Homs defense.

A coalition of rebel factions that include the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham made a last call on forces loyal to Assad’s government in Homs to defect.

“Homs is the key. It will be very hard for Assad to make a stand but if Homs should fall, the main highway from Damascus to Tartus and the coast will be closed, cutting the capital off from the Alawite Mountains,” said Jonathan Landis, a Syria specialist at the University of Oklahoma.

In the south, the fall of Deraa and Suweida on Friday, followed by Quneitra on Saturday, could allow a concerted assault on the capital, the seat of Assad’s power, military sources said.

Deraa, which had a population of more than 100,000 before the civil war began, holds symbolic importance as the cradle of the uprising. It is the capital of a province of about one million people, bordering Jordan.

In the east, a U.S.-backed alliance led by Syrian Kurdish fighters captured Deir el-Zor, the government’s main foothold in the vast desert, on Friday, three Syrian sources told Reuters, jeopardizing Assad’s land connection to allies in Iraq.

Published at Sat, 07 Dec 2024 15:14:25 +0000