♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Notre-Dame de Paris.
A treasured icon of Gothic architecture
and medieval construction.
ELSIE OWUSU: The level of determination
and the feat of engineering in those days,
just extraordinary.
NARRATOR: But on April 15, 2019,
disaster strikes.
A huge fire rips through the cathedral...
(people exclaiming)
NARRATOR: ...threatening to bring down the entire structure.
(revving)
♪ ♪
Now, master craftspeople and engineers
battle to bring Notre-Dame back to life.
PHILIPPE VILLENEUVE (translated): From what we've done so far,
it's clear to us that this cathedral will be extraordinary.
NARRATOR: Hundreds of workers are in an ambitious race
to restore this medieval masterpiece
in time for a grand reopening planned for 2024.
(speaking French):
NARRATOR: Historians and scientists work together to analyze
and reproduce Notre-Dame's architectural mysteries.
KARINE BOULANGER: It is a very unique opportunity.
It's a kind of a
walking backwards in time.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: They're revealing ancient technology hidden for centuries.
MAXIME L'HÉRITIER: We're dealing with unknown structures
that are, so far, unique in Gothic architecture.
NARRATOR: And struggling to save
the fragile structure of the building.
JEAN-DIDIER MERTZ: The loss of matter
is catastrophic for us.
NARRATOR: Now, three years into this extraordinary
five-year restoration project,
can this team meet its ambitious deadline?
"Rebuilding Notre-Dame,"
right now, on "NOVA."
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Paris.
A city of churches, basilicas,
and almost 2,000 historic monuments.
On April 15, 2019,
the 850-year-old Cathedral
of Notre-Dame de Paris is undergoing
a six-and-a-half-million-dollar renovation
of the spire...
...when a fire breaks out inside the oak framework of the roof.
After 90 minutes,
the 400-ton timber and lead spire gives way
and crashes through the stone vaulting.
The fire destroys the roof and spire,
and leaves three gaping holes in the vaulting.
The structure is significantly weakened,
and there's an urgent concern.
If the remaining vaulting were to fall,
it could trigger a catastrophic collapse.
PASCAL PRUNET (translated): We didn't know how the vaults, the walls, the buttresses
would behave in the absence of the roof
that had collapsed above.
So, we had to stabilize the structure.
NARRATOR: In the immediate aftermath,
the focus is on protecting
what has survived from further damage.
Engineers race
to install supports beneath Notre-Dame's flying buttresses
to shore up the fragile structure.
Meanwhile, water has saturated the vaults,
adding weight to the weakened stonework,
increasing the chance of a total collapse.
And without the roof,
the building remains open to the elements.
Before they can make the structure watertight,
workers have to remove
40,000 burned and melted scaffolding poles
left over from the spire restoration.
To keep the stonework dry,
the team builds a wooden platform.
On top, a lightweight aluminum frame
covered with water-resistant sheeting
forms a temporary roof
that opens and closes on a system of rollers.
PRUNET (translated): It's an ingenious tool that protects against humidity
and shelters these vaults, so they can dry.
NARRATOR: The rolling roof enables workers to lower
construction materials through the central hole
in the vaulting.
During all this work,
the medieval masterpiece has been closed
to worshippers and tourists alike.
WOMAN: Pretty sad to see it like this.
You can't get close to the building at all.
It's almost like you would walk by it
and not necessarily go to it
as a destination, like it once was.
NARRATOR: And what a destination it was.
Around 13 million people toured Notre-Dame each year
before the fire.
They came to marvel at a building
that pushed the limits of Gothic architecture.
WOMAN: I was very connected to it.
So I was quite broken after, you know, hearing about the fire.
NARRATOR: We still don't know how the fire started.
But three years later,
the ambitious project to restore the cathedral
has ramped up.
MAN (speaking French):
MAN 2 (on radio):
(speaking French)
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The team here has more than tripled in size.
As many as 200 workers are now battling
to bring Notre-Dame back to life.
VILLENEUVE (translated): We all really work
with a lot of love and gratitude,
and we motivate each other to meet the deadline
and reopen the cathedral to the public.
NARRATOR: The French Senate has ruled Notre-Dame
will be rebuilt exactly as it was before the fire.
Donors have contributed almost $900 million
towards this effort.
But the task ahead is enormous.
The team must remove tons of toxic lead dust
that remains of the old lead roof
left over from the fire,
then clean and restore fragile stained-glass windows.
To reconstruct the roof identically,
they must fill the three gaping holes in the stone vaulting,
rebuild the timber framework from almost 1,000 oak beams,
cover it with thousands of square feet of lead tiles,
and raise the iconic 210-foot spire.
It's the largest restoration project
in the cathedral's history.
VILLENEUVE (translated): I only have one goal-- repair and rebuild the cathedral,
put the rooster on top of the spire,
and say, "Mission accomplished."
NARRATOR: That's the plan.
But before they can even start work on this ambitious scheme,
they must shore up the remaining damaged roof.
For hundreds of years, the arched stone vaults,
made from thousands of cubic feet
of interlocking limestone blocks,
supported the roof above.
But now the vaulting is extremely fragile.
Repairing the arches could trigger a collapse.
To stabilize the structure,
the team must install 52 timber support arches
beneath the vaulting so they can rebuild safely.
♪ ♪
But installing them more than a hundred feet above the ground
is no small feat.
♪ ♪
To do it, scaffolders have built a giant steel structure inside
to allow workers to access
virtually every corner of the immense cathedral.
RÉGIS JAEGER: It's a big job
for our workers because
it's a lot of material and the access is difficult.
We have 1,000 tons of scaffold.
It's a lot of tubes, big and heavy.
It's a big, big challenge.
OWUSU: An extraordinary amount of expertise
has gone into creating a skeleton
to sit inside the building
so that the outer building can be rescued.
NARRATOR: It takes around 20 weeks to build up the scaffolding
inside the cathedral in order to begin
the installation of wooden supports,
shaped to match the geometry of the vaults.
YVES MACEL (translated): This is where you need
to be careful not to hit the scaffolding
or hit the vault.
The challenge is to get everything inside
without damaging anything,
without putting people in danger.
You have to be very, very careful.
NARRATOR: Each temporary support arch is fitted with metal brackets
to secure it in place.
Hydraulic jacks raise it to meet the underside of the vaulting.
MACEL (translated): Each support is unique and has its own specific location.
(drill whirring)
NARRATOR: The arches connect to the rest of the supporting framework.
(translated): If the stones were to move,
they would come to rest on our supports.
Our supports will stay there until the vaults are repaired.
♪ ♪
OWUSU: It's almost as if you have to design a building
to keep the building safe.
What you would normally define as a temporary works
has taken a level of ingenuity and a level of skill
which is quite exceptional.
NARRATOR: It takes six months to install all 52 vaulting support arches.
(translated): The structure is no longer at risk of collapsing
after it was weakened by the fire.
NARRATOR: Deputy director of operations Jonathan Truillet
helps coordinate the work to bring Notre-Dame
back from the brink.
♪ ♪
TRUILLET (translated): It's a technical and logistical challenge.
And if we don't respect our deadlines,
we'll accumulate delays and never catch up.
NARRATOR: The deadline of 2024 for completion
isn't just a hopeful wish.
This is when all eyes will be on Paris
for the Summer Olympics.
A grand reopening of Notre-Dame
will crown a year of celebrations.
TRUILLET (translated): Everyone must mobilize
to reach this objective.
Even if it is ambitious, it is achievable,
if we have the drive to accomplish it.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Fewer than three years remain to meet the deadline.
With the vaulting to rebuild,
the roof and spire missing,
and the site still contaminated by lead dust from the fire,
the task is daunting.
TRUILLET (translated): We must work on multiple tasks at the same time,
have several worksites within the worksite.
We must intervene both inside, to clean the site,
and at the same time, above our heads
to rebuild the vaulting and the roof.
NARRATOR: Above the stone vaulting,
Notre-Dame's roof was completely destroyed by the fire.
Now one of the most complex challenges
is to entirely rebuild
the thousand-ton timber and lead roof.
Chief architect Rémi Fromont will oversee the reconstruction
of the medieval roof structure, known as the forest.
FROMONT (translated): We're going to participate
in the reconstruction of this absolutely emblematic,
absolutely unique, absolutely magnificent,
and absolutely iconic work, so it's very exciting.
It was one of the first great Gothic frameworks,
extremely well-designed
and ahead of its time, from a technical point of view.
NARRATOR: During a research project in 2014,
Rémi and his colleague measured the dimensions
of every beam in the forest
to create the first comprehensive survey
of Notre-Dame's roof.
FROMONT (translated): Our surveys were very useful.
It's largely thanks to them that we're able
to restore the roof of the cathedral identically.
NARRATOR: Rémi's team will need 850 oak trees
to reproduce the Gothic roof trusses.
The cathedral's spire will be built from another 1,200 trees.
FROMONT (translated): The spire is a huge task to understand and restore.
It's quite dizzying to think
that we're building a 210-foot-high wooden structure
perched 115 feet above the ground
on 13th-century masonry destroyed by fire.
We're not taking the easy way out, really not.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The spire was a 400-ton engineering masterpiece.
Hidden beneath the 16 copper statues
and over 100 tons of lead tiles
was a complex skeleton of oak beams, some as long as 65 feet.
The secret of its strength?
A dense lattice of oak tied into the rest of the roof
supports the entire structure.
OWUSU: The spire came to be
the embodiment of the building and of the Paris skyline.
Which took huge imagination and levels
of engineering and creativity and architecture
which is quite, quite exceptional.
NARRATOR: Reconstructing this wooden wonder to match the lost spire
is no simple task.
FROMONT (translated): We'll rebuild identically,
not because it's nice to build in a 13th-century style,
but because we need the new roof to behave just like the old one.
Do it differently
and the structure will behave differently.
The timber that was used originally was green,
that's to say it was not dry.
So we'll use green timber.
NARRATOR: In the 13th century, hewing beams
from hard, seasoned oak
with simple hand tools was arduous work.
So carpenters cut their timber
while it was still soft and green.
But building this way could be risky.
The medieval English town of Chesterfield may bear witness
to the perils of building with green timber.
It's thought the 660-year-old
crooked spire of the parish church could be due to beams
that have warped as they've dried.
For Notre-Dame's spire,
this precarious lean must be avoided at all costs.
FROMONT (translated): We need top-quality timber,
perfectly straight, to avoid this kind of problem.
Working with green wood requires
an extremely rigorous choice of tree.
NARRATOR: In public and private forests across France,
the hunt for 2,000 perfect oaks for Notre-Dame's roof
and spire begins.
One third of the country,
65,000 square miles, is covered by forests.
(translated): We're going to choose the trees.
NARRATOR: This crew of forestiers
has their work cut out for them.
They must source 60 flawless oaks for the spire
from an 8,000-acre forest.
(translated): We must inspect the tree from all angles,
otherwise you'll never know if there is a defect.
NARRATOR: The oaks felled for Notre-Dame
form part of France's annual forest management quota.
LOÏC EON (translated): That way.
But now we need to get a bit closer,
because something is not quite right.
There's damage 20 feet up, so we can't choose this one.
It won't meet the specifications given for Notre-Dame's spire.
So, we need to look for another tree.
MAN (speaking French):
NARRATOR: This oak was damaged as it grew.
These twisted fibers make it too weak for Notre-Dame's spire.
But on the other side of the clearing,
another candidate emerges.
EON (translated): No damage,
but we need to check the diameter.
We have a tree two feet in diameter.
AHMET CIRPAN (translated): In terms of felling it, there's no problem.
(revving)
NARRATOR: Logger Ahmet Cirpan begins by making
a cut that will direct the tree
to fall into the clearing.
(translated): It will go between those two trees, here, in this direction.
I don't cut with my chainsaw at random.
Okay, now we can start the final cut.
(saw buzzing)
♪ ♪
Yes, that's why we can't have anyone getting in the way.
NARRATOR: Notre-Dame's medieval carpenters used markings
to help them reassemble the beams correctly up on the roof.
♪ ♪
Today, this team attaches a barcode
to each oak destined for the cathedral,
so they can track it from the forest to its final position
in the new spire.
It takes several months
to complete the painstaking search to source
and fell their target of 60 trees.
FROMONT (translated): We're going to restore and rebuild the missing parts,
and that's something unique in a career.
We'll do it with all our heart, passion,
and above all, know-how.
NARRATOR: Oak will form the backbone of the spire,
but it will be wrapped in a heavy metal-- lead.
Although the spire was almost completely incinerated,
its pinnacle survived the inferno.
Lodged in the vaulting stone,
the team gently nudges it free...
WORKERS (speaking French):
NARRATOR: ...and carefully winches it down.
L'HÉRITIER: We can still see the structure
of the spire was made,
with this fine lead sheets of a few millimeters thick
that were used
on the entire structure of the spire.
NARRATOR: They find six decorative lead roses
attached to the spire section.
We will be able to study how this decoration was made.
Touching the spire
that was just taken down from the vaults today,
it's a magical moment.
NARRATOR: And there are more surprises to come.
Lead was decorative and kept the cathedral watertight.
But there's another metal used here
that allowed Notre-Dame's masons
to push the limits of Gothic stonework.
♪ ♪
Innovations such as flying buttresses
to hold up the thin outer walls
allowed medieval masons to build
incredibly high, without needing massively thick walls.
As the team examines the structure closely,
they discover metal throughout the cathedral
that could unlock more of its architectural mysteries,
from the nails that join timber beams
to iron bars that brace
and hold secure the stunning medieval stained glass.
L'HÉRITIER: I was amazed that there's so many iron in, in this building
that was never truly studied before.
The staples that we see here,
they're embedded in the,
maybe the oldest part of Notre-Dame's masonry.
NARRATOR: These 18-inch-long iron "staples"
secure the great arches beneath
and prevent the stone blocks from collapsing
under the enormous weight.
65 feet above, along the very top of Notre-Dame's walls,
the destruction of the roof
has revealed previously concealed ironwork
that may have made the structure's height
and slender form possible.
It's really exciting, because
we're dealing with unknown structures
on the top of the walls
that are so far unique in Gothic architecture.
NARRATOR: Medieval builders may have worried
that the top of Notre-Dame's tall, slender walls
could be an Achilles' heel.
The weight of the roof could push the stones apart.
The destruction of the roof has revealed
the builders joined these stones together
with more than 500 staples,
creating a ring of iron holding the walls together.
This engineering masterstroke has remained hidden
under the roof of Notre-Dame for hundreds of years.
L'HÉRITIER: The staples,
with the flying buttresses, are two ways
of preventing the stones to, to collapse.
It's an ancient form, a form which is known since antiquity.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Ancient engineers used iron staples
to lock the stones of giant megastructures into place.
These holes in the walls of Rome's Colosseum
were once filled with iron staples
that pinned the structure together.
But in medieval Paris,
masons used this technology to revolutionize architecture.
L'HÉRITIER: It looks like,
in Notre-Dame, we're trying to use ancient forms
of reinforcement, such as the staple,
in order to build a new form of architecture;
really high, really thin Gothic structures,
of which Notre-Dame is kind of the first true example.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: At his lab, Maxime unlocks the secrets
of each individual iron staple.
L'HÉRITIER: Like, we're acting
as some kind of detectives,
trying to find out the digital prints,
the digital signature,
of each of these staples
and to try to rebuild
their path from the workshop to the building site.
NARRATOR: Radiocarbon dating of organic material
left over from the smelting process
confirms the staples were installed
in the early 13th century,
when this part of the cathedral was built.
These are the oldest pieces of iron used in a Gothic church
that we know of so far.
That's a huge discovery.
This is revolution in Gothic architecture.
No other Gothic monument had used iron
in such a way before Notre-Dame.
NARRATOR: Maxime examines the microstructure of the iron.
Each staple was produced
by welding together multiple pieces,
suggesting that this iron was recycled.
L'HÉRITIER: The weld is the result of the mixing of scrap iron
to make a brand-new iron staple.
We're maybe dealing with the richest building site
at that time,
and knowing that it might have used
almost 90% recycled iron
opens new perspective.
NARRATOR: The research shows recycling iron
may have been common on the building site of Notre-Dame,
shedding new light on medieval building practices.
The lab's electron microscope reveals further clues
to the lengths that Notre-Dame's builders went to
in sourcing the material.
L'HÉRITIER: What we discovered is that
every single staple has a different chemical signature.
All these staples, they come from different iron
that was made in different places.
It means that there's a truly active iron market in Paris,
gathering iron from many, many different origins.
NARRATOR: These hidden iron staples may have also played a critical role
in saving the building in the wake of the fire.
The staples were placed by the medieval master mason
to reinforce the upper main walls.
They might have helped the walls
to prevent collapsing during the fire.
OWUSU: As a conservationist,
it's teaching us how expert
these builders were in those days.
It's a testament
to their technical competence and their vision
that they put in these structural elements
which have preserved the building for us.
NARRATOR: But Notre-Dame's marvels
go beyond the walls and roof.
The great cathedral's medieval builders
also pushed the limits of what could be made with glass.
The three rose windows date from the 13th century,
and together, they're made up of over 1,100 panels.
Protected by the stone vaulting,
they survived the fire unscathed.
♪ ♪
These kaleidoscopic wonders are filled
with depictions of biblical scenes and saints.
The scaffolding gives access to these rose windows
so experts can decode their secrets.
BOULANGER: It is a very unique opportunity,
because we won't see them again in the same way, never.
(in French):
CLAUDINE LOISEL:
NARRATOR: Glass scientist Claudine Loisel
and historians Karine Boulanger and Elisabeth Pillet
are working on the largest window in Notre-Dame.
The gigantic south rose window
measures almost 42 feet in diameter.
They're busy mapping every shard of glass.
PILLET (translated): It's a really big job.
In fact, I think at the beginning,
when we looked at this rose window, we had no idea
of all the questions it would raise.
NARRATOR: They hope to build a complete picture
of how the window has evolved over centuries of restoration.
The team must first identify what is original
13th-century glass and what is glass
from subsequent restorations.
BOULANGER (in French):
(in English): You see, there is a difference
between this yellow and this one.
This one is more translucent.
It's 19th-century glass.
This one is 13th-century glass.
The difference in colors results from
the composition of the glass, which was different
between the medieval time and 19th century.
NARRATOR: But there's a problem baked
into the original medieval glass:
it's slowly decaying.
LOISEL: On the older glass,
you observe much more corrosion process
in the glass composition.
This glass composition was more sensitive to the environment.
NARRATOR: In the 13th century,
glassmakers used potash.
Made from burnt wood and ferns rich in potassium,
potash reduced the melting point of the ingredients
used to make glass.
By the 19th century, sodium carbonate combined with
calcium oxide was used instead, and produced more stable glass
that did not corrode.
This factory on the banks of the Loire River in France
is one of the last places in the world that can produce
stained glass using medieval mouth-blowing techniques.
SIMON BALLAGH: We produce glass for major historical buildings
as Versailles or the White House.
NARRATOR: The team starts by mixing sand,
metal oxide for color,
sodium carbonate, and calcium.
They heat the mixture to over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit
and build up layers of the molten glass
on the end of a blowpipe.
The glassblower forms a sphere from the red-hot mass,
rolling it to maintain this shape,
which is critical to form an even thickness of glass.
It's manual know-how.
There is absolutely no machines,
and the glassblowers uses their sense, their feeling,
to blow one glass sheet.
HERVÉ GRIMAL (translated): Glass is a living material.
It takes a long time
to get to know it, to feel the material
at your fingertips.
NARRATOR: The glassblowers enlist the help of gravity.
They swing the 15-pound ball of glass in a 13-foot-deep pit
to elongate the ball into a tube.
GRIMAL (translated): It's a profession
where there's weight and there's heat.
So you have to be strong, tough at times.
It's a very demanding job.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Hervé has blown glass here for more than 33 years.
GRIMAL (translated): For us, it's about always having the right length,
the right diameter,
and the right thickness of the glass, too.
NARRATOR: Once the cylinder has cooled, they make a single cut...
...and send it to a special furnace, where it's unrolled.
Extreme heat of nearly 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit
and a wood block smooth out the glass
and minimize imperfections.
GRIMAL (translated): The goal is to try to get a very even thickness,
to achieve the perfect sheet.
NARRATOR: They carefully inspect each pane and remove any rough edges.
BALLAGH: Every glass sheet is different, and it has the spirit
of the glassblower.
Losing this patrimoine and know-how would be a disaster.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The factory marries these techniques
with the latest technology
to accurately reproduce stained glass.
BALLAGH: We can fit perfectly
with the old colors by using
tools like spectrophotometry, like X-rays.
And this allows us to know exactly what are the elements
that are in the glass and reproduce it for the future.
GRIMAL (translated): We'll be making glass
for the restoration of Notre-Dame in Paris,
which will be a high point in my career.
Well, it will make for a nice resumé!
NARRATOR: The team's knowledge of historic techniques,
combined with modern technology, enables them to reproduce
any of Notre-Dame's stained glass from any century.
BOULANGER: A stained-glass window
is always a mixture of original glass
and restoration from every century, almost.
Until the 20th century,
when a glass was too badly damaged,
we had to replace it.
NARRATOR: While mapping the south rose window,
they uncover an unusual trend.
They expect to see glass from multiple restorations
spanning eight centuries.
But they're finding original 13th-century glass,
glass installed during the 19th century,
with some panels containing both.
BOULANGER: We are finding lots of things.
They altered quite strongly
the design of the panels.
NARRATOR: While the glass team
has this unprecedented access, they must work fast
to solve the mystery of why the south rose window
only has 13th- and 19th-century glass.
♪ ♪
The clock is ticking for the architects and restorers.
To meet the challenge of reopening Notre-Dame in 2024,
the workforce here has increased dramatically.
Up to 200 people pass through the site each day.
♪ ♪
But the lead dust
that coats every surface makes operating here
potentially dangerous.
Protective clothing is essential.
Blaise Gomis is part of a team dedicated
to safeguarding workers from the deadly effects
of lead poisoning.
Without them, this huge operation would grind to a halt.
GOMIS (translated): Between the polluted zone and the clean zone,
there's us.
You have to go through us.
We take names so we have a count of the people on site.
Then, after they finish their job,
when they leave, they must go past me again.
(in French):
WOMAN:
GOMIS:
WOMAN:
GOMIS (translated): Lead, as you know, is harmful.
So they must be equipped.
We give them overalls,
underwear, boots, and helmets.
(suit zipping)
♪ ♪
And when they leave, they take showers to make sure
they eliminate as much lead as possible.
NARRATOR: To make the site safe, the team's next challenge
is to remove all the toxic lead dust.
They tackle the cleaning zone by zone,
eventually decontaminating the entire cathedral.
But this operation kicks dust into the air.
(vacuum whirring)
Workers in an area being cleaned
must wear heavy-duty breathing equipment.
Clara Dupuydauby
is one of 40 decontamination experts
that use special vacuums to meticulously clean every inch
of Notre-Dame's vaulting, walls,
pillars, and floors.
With this equipment,
we only work two hours and a half
at a time, and we need to stop to take a break.
We go have lunch.
And two hours and a half, and we go home.
NARRATOR: Vacuuming the lead dust will take eight months.
Then restorers can move on to deep-clean the stone
for the first time in its history.
Inside Notre-Dame,
it's already possible to get a sense of how
dramatically changed the cathedral will be
after the cleaning.
Beneath the lead and centuries of smoke
from millions of candles lies gleaming limestone.
This is how the cathedral looked 850 years ago
and will again soon.
VILLENEUVE (translated): Here are the stages.
PRUNET (translated): First step, second step...
Dirty, intermediate, and final.
That's great.
(drill whirring)
NARRATOR: The restorers working at Notre-Dame
are among France's foremost experts in their fields.
♪ ♪
Guiding this impressive concentration
of medieval knowledge
are chief architects Pascal Prunet
and Philippe Villeneuve.
VILLENEUVE (speaking French):
(translated): Let's go and meet the cleaning team.
(translated): The stone's changing color.
We're very satisfied with that.
But we know this is only the first stage of the cleaning.
(translated): But after, we'll be able to work without masks,
so that's the goal.
VILLENEUVE (translated): When we look at this vaulting, it's clear to us
that this cathedral
will be extraordinary.
So it's all enormously energizing.
NARRATOR: But this team still has a big job ahead
if they want to reopen the cathedral in 2024.
VILLENEUVE (translated): It's a completely crazy deadline.
But despite everything, we continue to work
so it can be met.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: To meet the deadline,
the team cannot afford any unexpected delays.
But an insidious threat to Notre-Dame's stonework
is developing.
With the loss of the roof and no protection
from the elements for almost two years after the fire,
the exposed stone vaulting was repeatedly soaked by rain.
♪ ♪
Now protected by the temporary roof, it's drying out.
But as the stones dry,
salts are crystallizing on the underside of the vaulting,
breaking off the outer layers of limestone.
All the damage in this part and on the, on the vault
is a result of the salt.
You can see the loss of matter is two or three centimeters.
This is catastrophic for us.
NARRATOR: In the 18th and 19th centuries,
restorers cast layers of plaster on top of the vaulting
in case of a fire.
This protected the stonework from the heat
of the 2019 inferno, but not from the water used to fight it.
This, along with months of rainwater,
washed salt from the plaster into the lower layers
of the porous limestone.
As the moisture evaporates, the salt crystalizes,
and forces the limestone apart,
destroying the inner surface of the vaulting.
We don't have the original surface of the, of the stone.
It is a real problem from an historical point of view.
NARRATOR: Geologist Véronique Vergès-Belmin
will use a technique to draw the salt out from the stone.
We need to use a material that can absorb the salt
and extract them through capillary forces.
NARRATOR: To extract the salt, Véronique's crew will coat
the vaulting with a paste of clay, sand, and purified water
known as a poultice.
The water from the poultice is drawn into the stone,
where it dissolves the harmful salt crystals.
As the clay of the poultice dries,
it draws the salt water out of the stone,
saving the vaulting from further damage.
The poultices will be removed when they will all have dried.
(tool whirring)
NARRATOR: The restorers chisel away the outer layer of mortar
between the stones to allow the poultice better penetration.
(machinery running)
Next, they load the sticky mixture
into a compressed air gun and spray it into every crevice.
Finally, they carefully
smooth the poultice across the areas
affected by the salt damage.
VERGÈS-BELMIN: You can see that it follows very, very closely
the surface of the stone.
And what we recommend is that
poultice should not be thicker
than half a centimeter to one centimeter.
Otherwise, there are risk that it falls down.
We need to have a very slow process
until the vaults are dry.
But this will take time, much time.
We have to get the cathedral ready in 2024.
This building has to live again.
NARRATOR: The poultice may stay in place until the new roof is built
and the vaulting is permanently protected from rain and snow.
Notre-Dame was built over the course of a hundred years,
section by section,
during the 12th and 13th centuries.
As each new segment of the cathedral was constructed,
another section of timber roof, known as the forest,
was built to cover it.
Hand axes were used to craft each individual beam
in the medieval roof structure.
The fire, which started in the forest,
took just hours to reduce this medieval masterpiece to ashes.
The team will soon begin an unprecedented challenge
to rebuild the forest in under two years.
FROMONT (translated): We're going to reuse techniques
that are extremely similar to what was used,
because it's technically necessary,
and if we don't do that, the wood will behave differently.
NARRATOR: The spire lost in the fire was erected in the 19th century.
These beams were cut with saws.
So today, Rémi's carpenters will use modern saws
to cut the new spire beams.
FROMONT (translated): We have extremely rigorous rules that are the highest
that can be had in carpentry,
because Notre-Dame is absolutely exceptional
in terms of wood quality.
NARRATOR: This sawmill in Normandy processes over
a million cubic feet of timber each year.
It's one of 45 sawmills across France that has answered
the call to cut beams for Notre-Dame's spire.
(translated): For us, it's a chance to prove our dynamism
and show that French forests can help rebuild this structure--
one of the jewels of France.
I do this as a form of philanthropy-- it's for free.
NARRATOR: The team wastes no time
in getting to work on the beams.
First stop: the debarker.
♪ ♪
This machine strips off the outer layers,
removing the loose bark.
Now the one-ton tree trunk enters the sawmill
and rolls onto the saw carriage.
FEILLET (translated): On this joystick,
we have buttons that allow you to do operations
like log loading or what is called slabber chipping.
The slabber is the first machine before the blade,
which shreds away the outer part of the log.
NARRATOR: The bandsaw blade
is a high-speed loop of steel that runs at
140 feet per second.
François removes inch-thick slices to trim the beam down
to the dimensions requested
by the Notre-Dame architects.
♪ ♪
FEILLET (translated): What I enjoy most is discovering the wood.
Each tree is unique.
Ultimately, it's a game of strategy
you play with each tree.
It's never the same thing-- it's something new every time.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The beams from François's sawmill are stacked,
ready to join more than a thousand others
coming from across France for Notre-Dame's new spire.
(translated): A sawmill like ours, we will not do anything
like this again in our lives.
We'll go down in history for having modestly contributed,
like everyone working on Notre-Dame,
to restore this cathedral-- our cathedral.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Inside Notre-Dame, the first chance
to get up close to the gigantic south rose window
in 160 years...
(speaking French):
NARRATOR: ...has revealed a mystery.
We only have 13th-century glass and 19th-century glass.
In the 19th century,
they removed everything that wasn't 13th century,
and then they had to do new panels
if a panel was missing.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The chief suspect for these radical changes to the window
is architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.
In the 1840s, he was tasked with breathing new life
into Notre-Dame.
At the time, it was not the beloved building we know today.
The cathedral was ransacked during the French Revolution,
statues of biblical kings on the façade were decapitated,
and it was used as a warehouse,
sitting derelict and unloved for decades.
Over the course of 20 years,
le-Duc reinstated the statues of the façade,
rebuilt the sacristy,
designed hundreds of new gargoyles,
and raised the 210-foot spire.
OWUSU: Viollet-le-Duc, God bless him,
would have been what we consider to be a starchitect, you know?
He was a man who knew his mind,
he was a man who was highly respected, really determined,
and saw himself as a powerful leader.
NARRATOR: And he used his power to make some puzzling changes.
During his restoration, le-Duc removed all glass
in the south rose window that was not original
and replaced it with modern glass.
Elisabeth is also finding
that he made significant alterations to some
of the original glass panels.
(translated): Look at this little martyr--
it looks like she was cut.
She's missing the colored lines around the edge.
The halo is slightly cut here, and her feet are cut, too.
Maybe she has been moved within this window.
(speaking French)
NARRATOR: Why did le-Duc alter the window?
Was he trying to impose his own design?
♪ ♪
The glass experts hunt for clues
here, at the Paris Médiathèque of Architecture and Heritage.
They hope le-Duc's plans
for the south rose window shed light on his thinking.
BOULANGER (speaking French):
NARRATOR: As they dig into the archives, they make a breakthrough.
BOULANGER: We just discovered that there was a change of structure.
Before Viollet-le-Duc, there was an iron reinforcement
in the center of the rose, but obviously it wasn't enough.
So Viollet-le-Duc put it further away from the center.
And when you removed the ironwork here,
he had to change the form of the panels.
NARRATOR: Le-Duc's restoration was sweeping.
♪ ♪
He removed a smaller structural ring of iron
and replaced it with a bigger ring
to strengthen the core of the window.
He removed all traces of previous restorations
to replace them with panels of new glass.
And he rotated the whole window 15 degrees
to make it structurally stronger.
The problem must have been that the medieval rose
wasn't stable in its axis.
That must have been the problem.
That's very interesting.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Le-Duc's major changes to the south rose
were motivated by more than mere aesthetics.
Strengthening the window has helped preserve
this masterpiece.
We don't come across this kind of new information every day.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Thanks to the scaffolding,
these historians and scientists
are painting an intimate portrait of how
the south rose window,
one of the wonders of this cathedral,
evolved to survive.
♪ ♪
Three years into the ambitious
five-year restoration project,
the team at Notre-Dame has already
stabilized the structure,
the process to free the cathedral
from the toxic lead is underway,
and two "test chapels" have been fully restored.
MARIE PARANT (translated): We are very surprised by the quality of the materials.
They used beautiful pigments,
gold of very good quality-- a very beautiful technique.
NARRATOR: Here, mural painting and stonework restoration techniques
have been tested.
They will be replicated throughout
the rest of the building.
PARANT (translated): In the long term,
it's to optimize the restoration of all the other chapels.
We're very happy.
We feel that we've played our part.
It's really the first step
towards the complete restoration of Notre-Dame.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: But there's still a long way to go.
Rebuilding the vaulting, the roof,
and the spire identically will be a monumental task.
(translated): It's extremely ambitious work, considering the schedule.
(translated): We have a huge responsibility
to the generations of today and the future.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Meanwhile, historians and scientists
are rewriting our understanding
of the very fabric of this medieval wonder.
♪ ♪
It opens new perspective.
That's a huge opportunity.
OWUSU: Tragic as the fire was,
I think it took something like that to make us understand
just what an absolutely amazing work of collaborative genius
that building was.
WOMAN: Notre-Dame is Notre-Dame.
(chuckling): We definitely need it back.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The last chapter of this extraordinary endeavor
has begun: to return Notre-Dame to France and the world.
♪ ♪
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Or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
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"NOVA" is also available on Amazon Prime Video.
♪ ♪