In a city of broad vistas and stolen glimpses, Notre Dame serves as a fixed point for Parisians, a stable presence
of Notre Dame is a “majestic and sublime edifice”, a “vast symphony in stone”, wrote Victor Hugo. “Every surface, every stone of this venerable pile, is a page of the history not only of the country, but of science and of art.” The devastating fire that broke out on April 15th, and destroyed much of the gothic cathedral’s wood-timbered roof and spire, stunned and distressed the French with a force that far exceeded the building’s religious significance.
The cathedral had withstood ransacking during the wars of religion, looting during the revolution, two world wars and Nazi occupation, becoming an emblem of resistance in the face of a constantly disrupted history. More than this, Notre Dame is a product of the paradoxes of that history. It is where an emperor, Napoleon, was crowned in 1804, and where the founder of modern republican France, Charles de Gaulle, was remembered upon his death.
Now that those flames have been extinguished, questions will turn to why Notre Dame burned, and how it can be rebuilt. The Paris public prosecutor has opened an investigation, declaring that “nothing suggests it was a deliberate act.” If this was indeed an accident, the focus will be the works to renovate the 19th-century spire, which began last summer. It was the oak-beamed roof above the vaults that proved to be both so flammable, and so difficult for the fire brigade to get to.
The search for somebody to blame will absorb France for some time. Many will want to know exactly what precautions were taken by those working on the renovation, and what exactly was the nature of the disaster-planning for a monument of this scale and national importance, situated amid narrow streets on an inaccessible island in the centre of the city. A broader question is whose responsibility it should be to maintain secular France’s great religious buildings.
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