# Rebuilding Notre-Dame cathedral (Paris) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 27, 2019, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437 "2019-12-27T03:47:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/21 "2019-12-28T12:11:19Z")
I did not know this until the fire, but the cathedral is owned by the government of France, not the Catholic church. I would guess most non French people don’t know that either. ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/22 "2019-12-28T13:24:06Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > I did not know this until the fire, but the cathedral is owned by the government of France, not the Catholic church. I would guess most non French people don’t know that either. I guess a legacy of the French Revolution? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/23 "2019-12-28T13:31:28Z")
> [@SanVito](#): > > I guess a legacy of the French Revolution? During the height of the revolution, it was used as a stable. Among the things being discarded, like the calendar and the imperial measurements, was the religion that had supported the old system and the right of kings. It’s amazing how much people will agree to when the alternative is having their head cut off. It was eventually returned to duty as a church, but I don’t think the government was in a hurry to give the church back a lot of real estate. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/24 "2019-12-28T13:43:14Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > Schrödinger’s cathedral? That would require that no one observes it. A neat trick that even David Copperfield couldn’t pull off with stooges, select camera angles, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/25 "2019-12-28T14:50:15Z")
Just 2 weeks after the fire over $800 mil was donated to rebuild it. Which might be more than is needed [Notre-Dame fire: Has too much money been given to rebuild it? - BBC News](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48039770) ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/26 "2019-12-28T15:37:47Z")
> [@SanVito](#): > > I guess a legacy of the French Revolution? While there were certainly some concepts related to secularization within the French revolution carried on, the transfer of Catholic Church ownership to the state was more than a century later. All Catholic churches, not just Notre-Dame, then existing became property of the state because of a [law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_French_law_on_the_Separation_of_the_Churches_and_the_State) passed in 1905. To take a step back, my sister is an architecture professor living and teaching in France. She had already been teaching as a professor in the US based on being a licensed architect\* before going back to earn her Masters and PhD in Paris. One of the things she did to earn extra money as a grad student and since was leading high end tours at Versailles and Notre-Dame. The kind of tours where people pay a premium for a tour guide with her background. As a result she was a source provided to the media around the time of the fire. You probably read a lot of unattributed background information she provided around the time of the fire. She is still involved in tours, just fewer now that there is less to see. She is still regularly engaging with some of the people involved in restoration planning. While she is not an engineer or builder, as a licensed architect she has more experience with making sure things can actually be built than those that merely have PhDs. She was home for Christmas. Guess what got discussed? Some bits captured from some of those discussions: - None of the professionals thought that Macron’s five year goal was feasible. - There are trained construction workers that build using ancient techniques in France. There are many centuries old buildings that require the use of those old skills for repair and maintenance. They need to train more for a job this big. There is already interest in those jobs. One of the concerns is managing how many new traditional skill artisans they train. If you train enough to rebuild quickly what do they do when the jobs dry up? - The walls were in serious risk of falling in the immediate aftermath of the fire. A strong wind would have been enough to potentially knock them down. Fortunately, the weather held until after they got bracing in place. - There are options that would still look and function reasonably accurately even if they are not original. She brought up other metal roof options for the old lead roof. If they choose less lead, but not lead free, lead coated copper roofing is one option, for example. - The stories about the concerns that prompted the sudden spate of rebuilding being 50-50 miss an important nuance. It is not that they couldn’t rebuild if things get worse. They could. They rebuilt some, but not all, old structures that were effectively leveled during WWII. The stories we are seeing now are more conveying that if it gets worse they probably won’t rebuild. It’s already a ludicrously expensive and difficult job. If the expenses and difficulty skyrocket further that may well kill the project. - A couple years before the fire, there was a Professor that came in and laser mapped the structure. There are some bits with poor coverage in his data but dominantly they have the structure accurately mapped to very small measurements. I want to say it was within millimeters. Sadly that guy died so he won’t get to see any results. - I know that sounds odd but it is a thing in architecture. It takes a lot of time, effort, and real world experience to actually become a licensed architect. Many of the instructors with PhDs in her former department here in the US were not licensed. Any designs they may have produced couldn’t legally be built without someone like my sister approving. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/27 "2019-12-28T15:51:18Z")
If it’s too expensive to rebuild it I think they will build a smaller version from scratch, possibly on the same site. ---
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/28 "2019-12-28T15:51:57Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Just 2 weeks after the fire over $800 mil was donated to rebuild it. The story specifically says pledged not donated. It is an important distinction. From last summer [French billionaires slow-walk donations to rebuild Notre Dame](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/notre-dame-fire-update-big-donors-delay-fulfilling-pledges-to-rebuild-notre-dame/) Most of that pledged money has yet to be actually donated. ---
**Author:** ![Space\_Vegetable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Space\_Vegetable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Space_Vegetable)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/29 "2019-12-29T12:17:09Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > Every molecule in your body is replaced (on the average) every seven years or so. [Snopes debunks this](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-body-replace-itself-seven-years/): “The central flaw in the argument is that an average of all the cells in a body masks the fact that some cells last very long times, and other cells don’t regenerate for a person’s entire lifetime…” ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/30 "2019-12-29T14:12:03Z")
> [@motu](#): > > There is a barely above zero chance of restoring the cathedral to the previous design. There are not any old growth trees of the required size to replace what was lost to the fire. At best, they could use laminated wood or another material altogether. The roof was tiled with lead, that is not acceptable in the 21st century. Notre Dame Cathedral can be rebuilt but it cannot be restored. France has its own [Forest of Troncais](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Tron%C3%A7ais), built hundreds of years ago to provide long oak for ships (and ironically finally coming of age in the mid-1800s.) So it’s possible that the cathedral needs even longer oak than that. And even so some people say that in order to _truly_ recreate the old technique you need to cure the oak in oil for years, but I don’t know anything about that. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/31 "2019-12-29T17:04:17Z")
> [@DinoR](#): > > The story specifically says pledged not donated. It is an important distinction. From last summer > > French billionaires slow-walk donations to rebuild Notre Dame > > Most of that pledged money has yet to be actually donated. Except that story [has since moved on](https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/french-tycoons-donations-notre-dame-restoration). As it was always obvious that it would. > [@Ludovic](#): > > France has its own [Forest of Troncais](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Tron%C3%A7ais), built hundreds of years ago to provide long oak for ships (and ironically finally coming of age in the mid-1800s.) > > So it’s possible that the cathedral needs even longer oak than that. And even so some people say that in order to _truly_ recreate the old technique you need to cure the oak in oil for years, but I don’t know anything about that. Indeed. While they do have a vested interest in wanting a full-scale timber reconstruction, [French foresters have ridiculed the media reports suggesting that there wouldn’t be enough oak](http://eauxetforets.blogspot.com/2019/06/notre-dame-de-paris-lafef-et-la-filiere.html). Nor does such optimism seem unwarranted. It is worth remembering that Viollet-le-Duc was able to source oak to replace about a third of the roof structure in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet that was at a time when French forests were at their all-time smallest extent. One of the paradoxes of industrialisation is that it often reverses deforestation, in part because less wood gets used for fuel. Such has been the case in France, where forests have actually almost doubled in size over the past two centuries. That’s helped take the pressure off older woodlands, which are now better protected anyway. Seasoning the oak may be more of a problem. But that’s just an issue of the time scale, not of whether a reconstruction would be possible. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/32 "2019-12-29T18:14:41Z")
Since the original took some 200 years to build, I’d say they had the time to season any oak that’s cut today. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/33 "2019-12-29T20:13:41Z")
I’d wonder how the massive lead contamination factors into this, too. They would have to thoroughly clean and re-clean everything of all that dust. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/34 "2019-12-31T19:33:47Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > France has its own [Forest of Troncais](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Tron%C3%A7ais), built hundreds of years ago to provide long oak for ships (and ironically finally coming of age in the mid-1800s.) > > So it’s possible that the cathedral needs even longer oak than that. And even so some people say that in order to _truly_ recreate the old technique you need to cure the oak in oil for years, but I don’t know anything about that. Wood soaked in oil? What could possibly go wrong? The question is whether they want to rebuild exactly as it was, use traditional materials only for the visible surfaces, or simply give the appearance of the old building? I imagine the professional traditional builders are used when the goal is to restore a portion of a building - ie. rebuild the staircase, or re-plaster a deteriorating room - and the goal is to maintain the current For example, the same spire with the same look could be built on a frame of stainless steel and be far less susceptible to future fires or rot or other damage. Similarly, the roof can be any type of beams, maybe steel, does not need to be solid oak; and the covering under the shingles, also modern materials - rather than over-engineered oak planning (I assume) it could be sheets of steel or something. These are all decisions to be made in the next few months (years, at this rate?). How important is it to rebuild exactly as it was way back when? Is it work the extra hundreds of millions of Euros? Perhaps a similar scale of project - almost - was the Venice Opera House La Fenice, destroyed by fire a few decades ago… > [@](#): > > After various delays, reconstruction began in earnest in 2001. In 650 days, a team of 200 plasterers, artists, woodworkers, and other craftsmen succeeded in recreating the ambiance of the old theatre, at a cost of some €90 million. As Gillian Price notes, “This time round, thanks to an enlightened project by late Italian architect Aldo Rossi and the motto ‘how it was, where it was’, it has been fitted out with extra rehearsal areas and state-of-the-art stage equipment, while the seating capacity has been increased from 840 to 1000.” > > **Detail of the decoration** > La Fenice was rebuilt in 19th-century style on the basis of a design by architect Aldo Rossi who, in order to obtain details of its design, used still photographs from the opening scenes of Luchino Visconti’s film Senso (1954), which had been filmed in the house. La Fenice reopened on 14 December 2003 with an inaugural concert of Beethoven, Wagner, and Stravinsky. The first staged opera was a production of La traviata, in November 2004. > > Critical response to the rebuilt La Fenice was mixed. The music critic of the paper Il Tempo, Enrico Cavalotti, was satisfied. He found the colours a bit bright but the sound good and compact. However, for his colleague Dino Villatico of the La Repubblica, the acoustics of the new hall lacked resonance, and the colours were painfully bright. He found it “kitsch, a fake imitation of the past”. He said that “the city should have had the nerve to build a completely new theater; Venice betrayed its innovative past by ignoring it”. (Wikipedia, as usual) So they only tried to make it _look_ as much like the original as possible. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/35 "2019-12-31T21:18:54Z")
The roof of Chartres Cathedral burned in the 1830s and it was replaced with an iron frame and copper shingles. [File:Chartres roof space the Charpente de Fer.jpg - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chartres_roof_space_the_Charpente_de_Fer.jpg) By now that’s an historical construct in its own right, but I don’t see why a similar solution for Notre Dame made of modern steel would be out of the question. This is especially considering the fragile nature of the remaining walls and buttresses. A properly engineered truss roof can relieve a lot, if not all, of the outward stresses on the walls by tying them together and resolving those forces within the roof. That wasn’t possible in medieval times when construction took centuries to complete, and before they knew how to engineer beams, columns, trusses, etc. beyond just piling more mass against it and hoping things would work. ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/36 "2019-12-31T21:26:55Z")
> [@Banksiaman](#): > > At some point they seem to have forgotten it once belonged to George Washington, maybe when it got the ye olde fibreglass handle and the tungsten carbide head. Ok, that addition to the joke had me in stitches. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/37 "2019-12-31T21:39:52Z")
I feel like the best idea is to dismantle anything that can’t be (safely) saved, rebuild it with modern materials and construction techniques such that it resembles the original structure and use the original parts that were taken down as a facade and/or interior decoration. Sure, right now, it might seem like it’s not the same but in 200 years the fire/dismantling/rebuilding will just be part of it’s story. Historians will talk about how the process was done, tour guides and documentaries will point out what’s original, what was done after the fire, which materials are original etc. It’s, what, 700 years old? In another few hundred years the pre-fire/post-fire thing will only serve to make it that much more interesting, regardless of how the reconstruction is handled. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2019, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/38 "2019-12-31T22:59:08Z")
If the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden\_Frauenkirche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_Frauenkirche) can be rebuilt, anything is possible. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/39 "2020-01-01T15:04:25Z")
During the 1982/1984 renovation of San Francisco’s cable car system, it was discovered the car barn and power house had [more issues](https://www.streetcar.org/1984_rejuvenation/) than anticipated. > [@](#): > > Contractors did get a big surprise when they started working on the venerable carbarn and powerhouse at Washington and Mason. Originally built in 1887 and rebuilt after being destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, it was found that the exterior brick walls were standing largely out of habit–there was no foundation to speak of. Essentially, a new steel structure was built within the walls of the old one. They didn’t even have to take the old walls down. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2020, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437/40 "2020-01-01T17:12:15Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > Every molecule in your body is replaced (on the average) every seven years or so. Are you still the same person? > [@Space\_Vegetable](#): > > [Snopes debunks this](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/does-body-replace-itself-seven-years/): “The central flaw in the argument is that an average of all the cells in a body masks the fact that some cells last very long times, and other cells don’t regenerate for a person’s entire lifetime…” That flaw is removed by the addition of the phrase “on average”. Just like I can gather up 100 people and hand one person $100. “Every person got $1” is wrong but “Every person, on average, got $1” is correct. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris/845437.md?page=3)