Notre Dame joins a long list of burned cathedrals

The fire declared Monday in Notre Dame Cathedral, one of the largest representatives of Gothic art, joins with other such disasters occurring in the world.

Here is a list of the most important fires in cathedrals since 1991:

• September 5, 1991.- The San Francisco Javier Cathedral, in the Japanese city of Yamaguchi, is destroyed and its two bell towers are partially disabled by a fire that has spread at night into the enclosure. The cathedral, built in 1952 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the founder of the Jesuits in Japan, was a major tourist attraction of this prefecture because of its famous descriptions engraved on the windows of the life of the Spanish missionary, who introduced the Christianity in Japan
• September 6, 1993.- A fire significantly damages the dome of the Cathedral of Esztergom, north of Budapest, and puts in danger its precious murals. The Basilica of Esztergom, built in the 11th and 12th centuries and rebuilt several times, was completed in its present form in 1856.

• October 17, 1994.– A fire destroyed the chapel of the Virgen de los Desamparados of Teruel Cathedral, to which is attached one of the Mudejar towers declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site dating back to the 13th century. The canon of the cathedral indicated a wax lamp lit as a cause of fire.

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• October 26, 1994.- The dome of Berlin's German Cathedral, a building that was in the period of restoration, burns as a result of a random fire, apparently caused by the spark of a welding device of the l 39; one of the workers who worked there.

The German Cathedral is one of the buildings of the historic center of Berlin virtually destroyed in 1943 as a result of the bombing of the Allies during World War II.

• April 12, 1997.- A fire completely destroyed the chapel of the cathedral of Turin, built in the seventeenth century, part of the royal palace of the Piedmontese capital, connected to the religious building by a corridor. The Shroud, which is preserved and preserved in the temple, was saved from fire.

• July 5, 2001. – The fire declared in one of the archives rooms of the chapter of the cathedral of Cordoba, located in the mosque-cathedral, concerns twenty-five of the 5,000 documents stored in this unit and which correspond, for the most part, to Mbad Accounts books.
• December 18, 2001.- The Cathedral Saint-Jean-the-Divine of New York is badly damaged by the fire which declared itself after four hours. The fire destroyed the church's souvenir shop, while the central nave, to which the flames had not come, was damaged by water and smoke.
• August 25, 2006.– A fire has caused enormous damage in the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in St. Petersburg, former imperial capital and nowadays Russia's second largest city. The cathedral, built in the first third of the 19th century and an architectural monument protected by the state, was being restored.

The spokesman for Notre Dame lamented: "There will be nothing left of the structure"

• October 29, 2014.– A fire seriously damaged the catholic cathedral of Sosnowiec in Polish Silesia, a neo-Gothic temple built in 1899 that was partially destroyed by a fire of unknown origin.
• May 2, 2016.- A fire in a Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in Manhattan destroys a large part of the building, including since 1968 on the list of protected heritage of New York. The building, located on 25th Street, was built in 1855 as an Episcopal Church and has been an orthodox cathedral since the 1940s.

• January 26, 2017.- The Cathedral of the Argentine city of San Nicolás de los Arroyos, located about 240 km north of Buenos Aires, is undergoing a fire that has "partially" destroyed the building, dating back to 1800.

The case of Brazil

Without being a cathedral in itself, another disaster linked to a historic building of world importance is the fire of National Museum of Brazil which contained precious jewels of the culture and history of this country. The building, the oldest of the country, exists in its present form since 1892. Previously, since 1802, it served as a residence for the Portuguese royal family and, after independence, the emperors Juan I, Pedro I and Pedro II . Through its extensive archives, which include collections of geology, botany, paleontology and archeology, it is considered one of the most important museums in South America.

EA