A year and a half after the

fire of Notre-Dame

de Paris, the archaeological crypt of the Île de la Cité, located under the esplanade of the cathedral, reopens its doors today with an exhibition in homage to this Gothic jewel and two key figures in its restoration in the 19th century: the writer Victor Hugo and the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

The exhibition, entitled

Notre-Dame de Paris.

From Victor Hugo to Eugène Viollet-le-Duc

, it offers the visitor a journey back in time to discover

how the writer and the architect saved the cathedral

, one with his pen and the other with the restoration works that restored all its splendor.

A visit to the crypt on the Notre-Dame esplanade also allows you to explore the archaeological remains of the Île de la Cité, the historic center of Paris, and its

2,000 years of History

: from the remains of the Gallo-Roman city of Lutetia to the 19th century XIX.

Before the reopening of the crypt, cleaning and decontamination work was carried out due to the

lead

that was spread around the monument after the fire of April 15, 2019. Since last May, Parisians and tourists can stroll along the esplanade of the cathedral.

From today you can also visit this archaeological crypt.

When

Victor Hugo

published

Notre-Dame de Paris

(

Our Lady of Paris

)

in 1831,

the Gothic cathedral, built between 1163 and 1345, was in very poor condition, both due to the passage of time and the acts of vandalism committed during the Revolution French and lack of maintenance.

The cathedral, closely linked to the History of France and Paris, is one of the protagonists of the novel along with the hunchback

Quasimodo

, the gypsy Esmeralda and the arhidiacon Claude Frollo.

The novel even describes a fire in the cathedral, a passage many readers remembered when Notre-Dame burned in 2019.

The immediate popularity of Victor Hugo's novel changed the image that Parisians had of the cathedral.

Their literary success led to campaigns for its restoration.

They commissioned the works to two architects: Jean-Baptise Lapsus and

Viollet-le-Duc

.

The

first spire of the cathedral

, built in the 13th century, was dismantled in 1786 because, given its poor condition, it was feared that it would collapse.

Viollet-le-Duc built a new spire to crown Notre Dame, which collapsed in the fire last year.

This architect allowed himself some

licenses when restoring Notre-Dame

, true to his principle that "restoring a building is not maintaining, repairing or redoing, it is restoring the complete state that may not have existed at the time."

The base of the new spire was surrounded by copper statues representing the twelve apostles and the symbols of the four evangelists.

The face of Viollet-le-Duc appears on the

statue of Saint Thomas

, a nod from the sculptor to the architect who was contemplating his work.

During the restoration, Viollet-le-Duc

added

a series of

grotesque and monstrous figures to

the upper gallery that linked the two towers

, some of them inspired by illustrations from the 1844 edition of Victor Hugo's novel, among other sources.

Notre-Dame's most famous chimera is Le Stryge, a pensive winged demon who watches over Paris from above.

Restoration work on the cathedral began a few years after the invention of photography.

In the exhibition we see some daguerreotypes made by great photographers of the time such as Henri Le Secq, Charles Nègre or Charles Marville, which the architect preserved.

They are the

first photos of Notre-Dame

.

Also on display are a model of the cathedral esplanade before the

fire of 1772

, multilingual editions of

Our Lady of Paris

, posters for some of the novel's film adaptations, and an illustration by Henri Meyer showing Victor Hugo as a giant seated between the two towers of the cathedral.

A year and a half after the Notre-Dame de Paris fire, restoration work has not yet begun.

Consolidation works have been carried out on the building, the structure of which was badly damaged after the fire.

This summer they began to dismantle the scaffolding, which had been placed before the fire to restore the cathedral spire and which withstood the disaster.

Once the scaffolding has been dismantled, it will be possible to better see the state of the cathedral vault and begin to restore the building.

President

Emmanuel Macron

set himself the goal of restoring Notre-Dame in five years, just in time for the Paris Olympics in 2024. Macron has finally decided to restore the spire identical to the one built by Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century, even though he personally would have liked to give the cathedral "a contemporary gesture."

General Jean-Louis Georgelin, president of the public establishment in charge of the conservation and restoration of Notre-Dame, is confident that

in 2024 the cathedral can be opened for worship

, but the work will probably continue abroad for a long time.

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