National Geographic - UK (2022-02)

window. “Is Notre Dame burning?” she asked.

The patch of flickering orange on the roof made

no sense. I’m sure they’ll put it out soon, I mut-

tered. Moments later we saw the flames shoot

up the wooden spire and engulf it.

E

VERYONE IN FRANCE REMEMBERS

where they were when Notre Dame

burned that April night—in that

way, though no one died, it’s like

9/11. Bernard Hermann, a retired

photographer, was in his garret on the Place du

Petit Pont, facing the cathedral. A book of his,

called Paris, km 00 —on French maps, distances

are measured from a zero point in front of Notre

Dame—consists of photographs taken from his

windows. “The drama of Notre Dame was for

me the end of the world,” Hermann said. “I was

thunderstruck. I closed the curtains.”

Jean-Michel Leniaud, a historian of architec-

ture, was at a reception at the Palace of Versailles.

He rushed back to Paris and watched the drama.

“People were crying. People were praying. People

were kneeling in the street,” he said.

Six miles to the west, Faycal Aït Saïd, who now

operates the crane that towers over the wounded

cathedral, was finishing his shift on an even

taller crane, building a new office tower. Alone

in the sky at 425 feet, he saw the giant plume of

smoke on the horizon, beginning to drift west.

By the time Marie-Hélène Didier, the culture

ministry conservator responsible for Notre

Dame, got through the firefighters’ perimeter,

most of the precious artifacts had already been

extracted and placed in the yard. “It looked like

a big flea market,” she said. Late that night, she

escorted some of the treasures in a city van to

a vault at the Hôtel de Ville. The linen tunic of

St. Louis, the 13th-century king and crusader,

was on Didier’s lap. Next to her, her boss held

the Crown of Thorns.

President Emmanuel Macron was at the Élysée

Palace, where he had just recorded a televised

national address for that evening responding

to the “yellow vests”—the protest movement

against his government. He canceled the speech

and rushed to the cathedral. Notre Dame is “our

history, our literature, our imagination ... the epi-

center of our life,” he said, speaking into the TV

cameras. “This cathedral, we will rebuild it, all

of us together.”

Dorothée Chaoui-Derieux, a conservator who

oversees archaeological digs in Paris, read the

news on Twitter as she made dinner for her three

children. She’d never taken them to Notre Dame,

she realized. It didn’t occur to her that she’d be

spending nearly every day for the next two years

in the empty cathedral, sifting through debris—

what she calls vestiges—that Notre Dame itself

would become an archaeological site.

As the church was still burning, TV networks

offered talking heads. “Stupidly, I stayed in front

of the TV, even though I live in Paris and should

have gone to see it,” said Philippe Gourmain,

a forestry expert. With rising fury, he heard

Sourcing the stones and wood

Île de la Cité was an important center of city life when construc-

tion began on Notre Dame in the 12th century. Back then, stone

came from quarries that now lie beneath modern Paris. For

today’s renovation, limestone of similar geologic composition

is being quarried in Oise and Aisne, while centuries-old trees

are being felled in the Bercé Forest and elsewhere in France.

City extent

Limestone

quarry

12th-century Paris

Paris

City extent

today

Se

in

e

Île de la Cité

2 km

2 mi

Paris

FRANCE

Bercé

Forest

Seine

R.

OISE AISNE

ROSEMARY WARDLEY, NGM STAFF. SOURCE: INSPECTION GÉNÉRALE DES CARRIÈRES NOTRE DAME AFTER THE FIRE 49