Our Lady after the fire: what was saved and what was not

On April 15 at 18:43 started a fierce fire it would keep the whole world in suspense for hours. One of the religious symbols of Western culture, architectural marvel of humanity, the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, He burned savagely.

Half a day, it took the firefighters to extinguish the fire and a few hours later, while in France began what will surely be the largest collection in the world (in a short time, about 500 million euros had already been collected for the restoration of the temple.), There were still many questions about the degree of destruction left by the flames.

The roof of the cathedral, with its precious wooden interior structure of more than 10 centuries, collapsed at the height of the cruise, that part of the churches where the ground floor is in intersection with the transept, a smaller and more perpendicular nave.

(Read also: How will the reconstruction of Our Lady?

According to specialists who visited the church the next day, we still need to know how the structure will survivel from the cathedral to disaster. Ready to leave the tragedy, Emmanuel Macron promised to rebuild the monument in five years.

The 14 million tourists who visit the French capital each year and its main attractions should be content to photograph Notre-Dame outside because main facade (the one from which rang the bells of Quasimodo, the hunchback of Victor Hugo's novel) He was not injured. Also his famous relics and many of his works of art.

As the world is just recovering from the shock, Paris is already going to recover to his brightest star.

(Read also: Our Lady, the perfect symbol … but what?)

Damage control. At the very moment when the French were beginning to decide on the regulation of the donation system proposed by the president and the implementation of the competition for the restoration of the cathedral, the following days, the firefighters continued to examine the structure to verify that there were no new possible outbreaks of fire.

This general review of the building also included a first approach by specialists to attempt to calculate the magnitude of the disaster.

Benjamin Mouton, former chief architect of the cathedral, said that the rebuilding of Notre Dame should be an exercise in humility and culture. Because now, the debate that begins is one that runs through every restoration of a historic architectural work. Should the reconstruction work restore the building in its original state or, on the contrary, should the new intervention leave the mark of its time?

The cathedral began to be built in 1163 and in 1345 it was completed its construction During the French Revolution, it suffered serious damage and its most important restoration process in 1800 was in the hands of the architect Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc who, among others, added the tower which was Collapse on April 15th.

Just Benjamin Mouton recalled that the current building was the result of hundreds of years and interventions on the original material of the church.. On this subject, each era has left its testimony and lived centuries and styles in harmony. Why could not our time leave a trace in the history of this symbolic cathedral?

(Also read: VIDEO: The construction of the Notre-Dame cathedral)

Religion Fortunately, some of the essential symbols of the temple survived the disaster: the famous stained-glbad windows of the facades, called "rosetones"; the bells that give the hours in their towers and even the sacred relics of Christianity: the crown of thorns of Christ preserved among golden threads.

And a miracle: the bad that crowned the collapsed tower and contained one of the thorns of that same crown of Christ was found among the rubble, miraculously saved from the destructive heat of fire. All good omen.

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