that the ancient workmanship that went into it no longer exists.

the stained glass window makers, the wood carvers with the kind of skills that existed back then. Rebuilding it as it was is impossible.

Most of the roof is from the 1800's.

Like most cathedrals, it has had fires, sackings, and all manner of calamity throughout history and has been restored a number of times.

some of the stained glass dated from the 12th century. Others were rebuilt in the 19th century, using old glass. Not 20th century.

There are artisans who can work on old structures all over Europe.

Lots of stonemasons and other artists have been working on it for most of their lives.

The list goes on.

They are never really "finished" structures, so much as things that need a lot of maintenance and re-work, even if they reach a state of "completion".

It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. It's a continuous operation.

The rose windows, the most historic have been saved according to reporting.

Some of those, or similar, work on DC's National Cathedral, but not many around, I'm sure.

There are skilled craftsmen and artisans who will have much work to do in the years to come.

We have the ability, it just costs a lot of money. For this I’m sure the money will be available.

Reims is a good case in point.





As is the cathedral in Dresden.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/europe/dresden-past-glory-is-revived-in-this-rebuilt-wonder-8488454.html

NEVER underestimate the power of a dedicated amateur enthusiast. When someone with what could be termed OCD tendencies turns their attention to recreating an ancient object, you would be amazed at the results. There is a market for people with these skills, they will be called upon.

Rest assured, there will be an immense amount of attention to the details of the reconstruction brought forth.

You may be pleasantly surprised at the results.

To me it would be a life-sized dollhouse, bereft of historical gravity, but I could be way off base here.

Nothing beats something that is authentically old, but the recreation of a historic structure still gives future generations some idea as to how the original looked and felt.

And much of the glass is from the 20th century.

Do people generally believe that everything there was 700 years old?

I’m a pretty big fan of history but yeah, I knew nothing whatever about that cathedral. I assumed it had seen repairs and the like, but an entire rebuild would not have occurred to me.

People visit the White House and think they are walking around on floors that Lincoln trod upon, not knowing that the last re-do there looked like this:



Notre Dame is a "700 year old building" in the sense that the general concept of it has been there that long. But it has been through all sorts of havoc as many of those structures of course have been - particularly when you consider that electrical lighting itself is relatively recent, and that to illuminate things in most of that history, you had to burn something.

The Victor Hugo novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame was part of the fundraising effort for a major restoration effort to address the sacking of the cathedral in the French Revolution.

It’s just so incongruous.

Thanks for the history lesson, btw. You’re a consistently excellent poster.

this is an opportunity to rebuild the interior with the caveat "after the 2019 fire."

Here's that spire under construction.

I assure you they did not have photography hundreds of years ago.

I remember walking into to Notre Dam in the evening one december. Some lady was singing Ava Maria on a balcony inside. It was gorious. So sorry to the people of France.

are pretty ancient. Not 20th century.

It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

This discussion has modified my point of view.

But the reason people want to visit the originals is to be in the presence of history, to connect to previous eras, to share, even tangentially, the experience with generations long gone or yet to come...

I have seen the Mona Lisa thousands of times, but I have never stood in the presence of the canvas...
I have seen the ceiling art of the Sistine Chapel, but I have never stood under the center and took it in...
I have heard operas performed, but never been to the Palermo Opera House in person...

If the Cathedral were rebuilt, it would not be the same. It would be a replica and the connection to the past that it held would be lost and hollow. I can buy a reproduction of a Picasso for a couple hundred bucks...but I cannot obtain an original for much the same reasons.

What was lost today is lost forever and cannot be brought back, even if it looked identical and even if no expense was spared.

That spire was built in 1840.

The French Revolution was not kind to it, to put it mildly.

It was pretty much a ruin when Victor Hugo wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame as part of the fund raising effort to rebuild it.

It has had the head replaced 4 times and has had 3 new handles, but it's the same axe.

I know what you are saying. It's the idea and concept of the building that matters. Rebuilding it will give the people of Paris and France a purpose, and will probably spur support internationally. At least it should.

Versailles continues to be an ongoing work as well.

Query how much a decidedly nonreligious government should be spending on a religious building still being used for that purpose. It's not as if the French government does not have budgetary pressures. I can't see the gilets jaunes arguing for a surtax to rebuild a cathedral. It was, after all, in no small part due to exorbitant building expenses in Rome that Protestantism became an attractive cause to German princes seeking to secure their own revenue base.

But there were relics and artwork lost inside, alongside the portions that could be rebuilt; but the mystique is going to a place that was something less than 80 or 90% reproduction or replica.

And if the spire was only approaching 200 years in age instead of a 1000 years, that is still significantly different than "was rebuilt last year to the exact dimensions of the 1840 addition"...no matter how it is viewed, the world lost an historic site today and we are all culturally poorer for it.

Cathedrals burn. That's why the Shroud of Turin has holes.

Getting out the third molar of St. Pierre du Fromage, and the Holy Booger of St. Whoop de Doo, complete in their reliquaries is part of the evacuation plan.

Here it is sans spire:



I'm not trying to minimize what happened, but in the larger scheme of things it is not as bad as some people believe. It's burned before and come back fine.

Excellent post.

In many cathedrals, and Notre Dame is no exception, there is a treasury for which, unlike admission to the building generally, a charge is assessed for looking at the collection of "cool stuff" that's been donated or otherwise acquired over time.

My favorites are the things like the "pieces of the true cross" and the odd bits of bone, dried skin, hair and other parts allegedly from holy figures, many of them hardly remembered.

The "catacomb saints" popular in German and Austrian cathedrals in particular, are pretty cool. There was a lively trade in corpses recovered from Roman catacombs, who'd be dressed up in all sorts of regalia and then sold to church builders in central Europe, along with a bogus backstory of them being some sort of early Christian martyr or saint.

Those kinds of things were like sports memorabilia are now. Instead of a piece of Babe Ruth's jersey worn during his last home run, it's a finger cut from some corpse and pronounced to be one of the disciples, set in a most amazing piece of crystal and gold gewgawgery. That kind of stuff would bring pilgrims - and more importantly their offerings - flowing in.

One of the great trips I've not made...yet.
Your point is correct--as long as some is original, in time to come ALL will be seen as historic. But right now, it seems like such a terrible loss...and that is why not everyone can hear what you are saying. It will not be the first rise from the ashes, nor the last. Still, today feels too soon to see the spire rise once more.
Peace.

It is a terrible loss, and I am not trying to minimize it. I'm just suggesting that these kinds of things have happened, and do happen, and stuff does get restored when there is the will to do so.

Not for nothing, but epic wars have ravaged the European continent, and ancient buildings of this type were not spared, by either side. Many of them have been rebuilt/restored within recent memory.

Altho, for many, the hurt is too new, too raw and we still aren't sure what of the structure will be left.

Paris will rise again. It always does.

On edit-it is on a white Lombardy poplar panel. I had to check.

Any wood inside has been replaced at least once.

Accurate as to which era?

This is not the first fire. It's been sacked and rebuilt many times.

The spire that fell today, for example, was from the 1840 round of renovations.

So, when you say "accurate", do you mean as to any particular era? Or "accurate" as to last week?

The entire place is 3D laser-digitized:

Yankee Stadium was built in 1923 and was immediately the largest and grandest of all stadiums in baseball.

It was then closed for two years for extensive renovations and re-opened in 1976. The structure of the stadium itself was not destroyed but many of its signature features were changed or removed or replaced for the modern standards of the time.

Then in 2009, the original stadium was demolished and a brand new Yankee Stadium with modern 21st Century amenities opened up across the street. There was an effort to recreate the old stadium by the team, but the question was, which version to recreate--the 1923 version or the 1976 version? The team had success in both versions so there was obviously a high level of nostalgia towards both. In the end, the team seemed to do a weird hodgepodge, recreating certain elements of the old stadium both before and after its renovation.

Aside from believing that old buildings are, in all respects, the same as the day they were finished, the other one that gets me are observations along the lines of:

"Wow, they had great skills to build a structure that stayed up for 700 years."

...not realizing that we generally don't visit and tour the ones that fell down and aren't there.

we have the Pyramids of Egypt.

Or as someone famous (can't remember who) once said...

"mankind fears time, but time fears the Pyramids"

But I was only thinking of man-made structures, and not ones that were built by visiting space aliens.

Don’t even try to replicate. Take the base building and modernize. The German Reichstag is a great example.

I did not know the history of that particular building, and I was like, “Did they build it that way?”

Pretty cool.

And updating-as-restoring is part of the history of many old buildings.

The stained glass should be vignettes of French history up to 2020 or so.

I love stained glass windows. Wood arches with stained glass roof panels.

Back before man figured out how to make horizontal load bearing beams arches were the only way to span much of a distance. So I think the basic stone structure and arches are pretty much original.

I do think there are modern craftspeople who can recreate the work.

Here's a guy who is recreating the 2000+ year old Antikythera mechanism using methods "consistant with the original spirit of the device."

I think the original craftspeople would have appreciated that.

http://www.clickspringprojects.com/

With incredible precision. The real loss is the artifacts. The smells. The air. The sounds. You could feel the history when walked in.