Walking briskly over the Pont Neuf towards the Louvre, as night fell over Paris, I began to see other people hurrying in the same direction, some holding long white candles. “Quick!” said a young woman to her children, “We’re going to miss her!”
Word had spread a few days earlier that the 14th-century Virgin and Child would be coming home that evening. For five years, since the fire of April 15 2019 almost destroyed Notre-Dame, this masterpiece of late Gothic sculpture found shelter at the medieval church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, opposite the Louvre. Now she would be the first to return to take up her place in the cathedral. And many of us Parisians, Catholic or not, had chosen to accompany her on this short journey, crossing the Seine towards the Île de la Cité.
In fact, the 6ft-tall statue being carried through the streets of Paris was a replica — the real Madonna was making her way home in an armoured vehicle. Since 1818, the year she was gifted to Notre-Dame, the tilt of her hip has made her stand out among the three dozen Virgin Marys represented in the cathedral. She stood by the south-east pillar at the crossing of the transept where, on the night of the fire, the spire collapsed on to the vaults just above her. Pictures taken the next day show tons of debris at her feet — and yet she was left untouched.
Next weekend, after five years in which an army of craftspeople has worked tirelessly to give the cathedral back her splendour, Notre-Dame will reopen. This was the promise made by President Emmanuel Macron and, thanks to the organisational skills of five-star general Jean-Louis Georgelin, it has been fulfilled.
“This is a battle for France. This is our destiny,” Georgelin said when he addressed the compagnons du devoir, the craftsmen and artisans working on the restoration. He knew how to galvanise his troops, but the general died last summer while hiking in the Pyrenees. His deputy, Philippe Jost, stepped in to finish the job.
When Notre-Dame was last restored, in the 19th century, it took the young architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 25 years to repair the remaining sculptures of the facade (French revolutionaries had beheaded most of them) and to redesign and build the 93-metre-high flèche, or spire, which had been dismantled in the 18th century.
This time, thanks to 340,000 donors contributing a total of more than €840mn, the cathedral has been restored and cleaned centimetre by centimetre for the first time in its 863-year long existence. With the last remaining €140mn, a campaign of works will soon start to repair and consolidate the eastern end of the cathedral, its chevet and flying buttresses.
During the past few weeks, activity inside and outside Notre-Dame has been even more frenetic than usual. On top of their work at the cathedral, the artisans have formed a choir, rehearsing in their free time. When the idea was first proposed in 2023, almost as a joke, more than 100 workers came forward, many with no previous choral experience. Having rehearsed for months at the Sorbonne and in churches across Paris, they will sing Gabriel Fauré’s “Cantique de Jean Racine” at a special mass on December 11.
Everything must be ready for next Saturday, when the president will address the nation at dusk in front of the cathedral gates. Macron will be hoping that, for once, the country will be united in gratitude. With a live broadcast of the reopening, and more than 100 heads of state, bishops and cardinals attending — although not Pope Francis — the stakes are high.
If the liturgy is centuries old, some symbols will add a distinctly 21st-century touch. Among the artists invited to contribute is French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. Celebrated for his idiosyncratic streetwear and collaborations with artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, the 75-year-old has designed 700 vestments for the clergymen of Notre-Dame, from the archbishop to the deacons.
In his apartment-atelier near the Arc de Triomphe, Castelbajac tells me that “noble simplicity” was his mission order. “This was not about ornament, fashion or illustration,” he explains. “The vestment must carry a message of hope and unity that brings people together.”
He took his scissors, and started cutting into paper à la Matisse. He came up with a golden cross and small shards of green, yellow, red and blue. He placed them on a cream background with the colourful fragments radiating from the cross. This was the pattern he was looking for, “a kind of post-medieval simplicity”, he says with a smile.
Castelbajac’s attention to detail and group choreography will reveal itself just after Macron’s address, when the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, will walk with his processional cross held high towards the central gates of Notre-Dame.
As the doors open, the sound of the cathedral’s choir — 80 singers aged nine to 30 — will fill the space. “This moment is conceived as an awakening of all senses,” says Henri Chalet, the 41-year-old director of the choir, which is as old as the cathedral and whose musical repertory goes back almost a thousand years.
In his office on Boulevard St Germain, a stone’s throw from Notre-Dame, Chalet is keeping calm. “Many of our young singers will have never sung in the cathedral before,” he says. “You can imagine the state they are in.”
However Chalet, who will oversee 1,200 religious services a year at Notre-Dame and a forthcoming season of weekly concerts including six world premieres, does not have the luxury of being emotional. “I must concentrate on the very few rehearsals we will hopefully have before the reopening ceremonies.”
Another artist who prefers to focus on the work at hand is Patrick Rimoux, the man hired to reinvent Notre-Dame’s interior lighting. In his workshop in the heights of Belleville, the “light sculptor” shows the many ways in which technology will enhance the natural light.
Before the fire, the cathedral’s interior lights were either switched on or off. Rimoux has patented a miniature LED chip for some 2,300 light sources that will be hidden throughout the cathedral. “For the first time in a Gothic cathedral, we will be able to control those different lights individually, to change their colour and their intensity,” Rimoux says.
He has designed 40 or so lighting ambiences according to the season, the time of day and the occasion. “The Cistercians are my masters,” says Rimoux. “Sunlight is all you need, but there are ways to gently enhance it.”
One man has had unreserved access to Notre-Dame in the past few weeks. He has a key that allows him to reach the presbytery, and from there the cathedral’s south tower and his own “swallow’s nest” high above the central gates. Since he needs to work uninterruptedly, he goes up only at night, from 10pm until dawn. Olivier Latry is one of the cathedral’s four organists. “I have my feet on the pedals, my hands jumping over the manuals and my head in the clouds,” he says.
Latry is preparing himself for the moment next weekend when the archbishop will “reawaken” the grand organ by asking eight questions of it. The organist will have to improvise a reply to each. “I have done it a few times in my life,” he says. “It is something that profoundly affects you. You need to improvise with your guts. You are left completely shaken.”
A titulaire du grand orgue de Notre-Dame since 1985, Latry is elated to be back home. As he has travelled the world in the past five years, people have often asked him about the cathedral and he has come to understand its significance beyond Paris or even France. “I finally realised that Notre-Dame de Paris is in fact Notre-Dame du Monde.”
Agnès Poirier is the author of ‘Notre-Dame: The Soul of France’ (Oneworld). Her two-part radio documentary ‘The Rebuilding of Notre-Dame de Paris’ is on the BBC World Service from December 3. notredamedeparis.fr
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