Now Notre Dame reverberates with light: it’s impossible not to be moved

An extraordinary restoration has swept away the lead dust and made the cathedral vivid, but thankfully not kitsch. Our architecture critic takes a look inside

“This cathedral is a happy metaphor of what a nation is and what the world should be,” said President Macron. Yet, in an obvious mismatch, the unity and harmony of the restored Notre Dame de Paris, the collective achievement of thousands of craftspeople, builders, firefighters, engineers, architects, clergy, funders and administrators, is as different as could be from the fractious state of politics in France, whose most recent prime minister resigned in the week before the cathedral’s reopening.

What is true is that the achievement of the restoration, more or less within the five-year span improbably promised by Macron amid the still-cooling embers of the 2019 fire, is an example of a French ability to get grands projets done, when they put their mind to it, with ruthless efficiency. It’s of a piece with the country’s extensive TGV train network, or the confident way in which past governments scattered crystalline modernity – the Louvre pyramid, the Pompidou Centre, the Eiffel Tower – around the venerable fabric of Paris. Something to do, maybe, with centralised power, the authority of the president, a history with a Sun King and emperors.

Topics

The rebirth of Notre Dame Cathedral

Just five years after a devastating fire tore through historic Notre Dame in Paris, the Gothic cathedral's extraordinary restoration is being unveiled. "Sunday Morning" goes inside the 12th century ...
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