Notre Dame prepares to reopen towers’ tour with return of famed statues of saints to rooftop

PARIS — Symbolic lifting of the statues surrounding the spire of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris marked the beginning of one of the last phases of the roof reconstruction before the towers of the Parisian icon will reopen to the public on Sept. 20.

Notre Dame is breaking all-time records of visitors, with the rector of the cathedral confirming to OSV News that “The number of visitors is increasing day by day.”

Father Olivier Ribadeau Dumas said, “Currently, we are welcoming 32,500 to 33,000 per day, and we have well exceeded five million people since the beginning of the year. And every month we see that there are 1,000 more visitors per day.”

At the beginning of September, e-ticketing will start for the visit of the towers, memorable not only for breathtaking views of the Ccity of Llights, but also for the close-up look to the gargoyles, or chimeras, and statues of 16 saints that will soon be back in their original locations.

On June 23, Archbishop Laurent Ulrich of Paris censed them during a moment of prayer before the first statue, that of St. Paul, was lifted by crane.

The statues were designed in the mid-19th century by French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who was responsible for the renovation of Notre Dame at the time.

The 16 statues were installed in 1861. Standing 11 feet high and weighing nearly 330 pounds each, they represent the apostles, and the symbols of the four evangelists: the lion (Mark), the bull (Luke), the angel (Matthew) and the eagle (John). Since February 2023, they have been on display at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris, on the famed Trocadéro square.

Their restoration had been decided and planned well before the fire on April 15, 2019. Their brown color had turned green over time due to oxidation, and repairs were needed in various places. They were taken down from the spire on April 11, 2019, four days before the inferno, to be taken to a workshop — a move that saved them from destruction when the roof collapsed. Made of a metal frame covered with copper sheets, they would not have withstood the heat.

The restoration work lasted from April 2019 to June 2021 in the Dordogne region of southern France, near Bordeaux. Costing $1.64 million, 85% of the restoration costs were funded by the Fondation Notre Dame, chaired by the archbishop of Paris. The remaining sum was provided by the American foundation Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris, the same organization through which Americans subsequently showed great generosity in restoring the cathedral damaged by the fire.

Today, the statues have regained their original brown color and are in impeccable condition.

Among them, that of St. Thomas, patron saint of architects, is of particular interest. It bears the features of Viollet-le-Duc himself, and its gaze is turned toward the spire, unlike the others, which are turned toward Paris. He can be seen holding a large mason’s ruler on which his name is written, with his hand on his forehead as if to watch over his work.

By the end of July, all the statues will have been returned to their original positions and the spire will be completely free of scaffolding and tarps.

“The replacement of the spire statues is a new highlight of this exceptional collective adventure that allows Notre Dame de Paris to present an ever more beautiful face to the world,” said Philippe Jost, president of Rebâtir Notre Dame de Paris, a public institution responsible for reconstruction efforts.

“The spire will soon be completely stripped of its scaffolding,” he said in a June 24 statement. “We are also completing the work in the western massif and our efforts will then focus on the apse of the cathedral, before other stages … with all the care it deserves and needs, a cathedral that has shown the attachment the entire world has for it.”

“This work had already been planned before the fire and should have been undertaken in 2019,” Father Ribadeau Dumas, rector of the cathedral, told OSV News. He added that it will last until 2028.

Another project will involve replacing the discreet, non-figurative stained-glass windows that Viollet-le-Duc installed in six side chapels on the south side of the cathedral — with contemporary figurative stained-glass windows on the theme of Pentecost, a project expected to be completed by December 2026. Claire Tabouret, a 43-year-old internationally renowned French painter who has lived in Los Angeles for 10 years, was chosen for the work in a public competition.

The project remains controversial as the existing stained-glass windows, to which Parisians have been very much attached, were not damaged by the fire.

Father Ribadeau Dumas believes however that the work now plays a secondary role in the life of Notre Dame. “The most important thing is what is happening inside the cathedral every day,” he said.

For the rector, “this is not a passing fad but a much deeper movement. … It is part of a spiritual awakening that we are seeing in France, but not only here,” he said.

“Many people are having a spiritual experience at Notre Dame,” Father Ribadeau Dumas said.

He said that one day in June he “saw a man who, as he was leaving the cathedral, turned around and decided to go to confession, something he had not done in 49 years. It was his visit to the cathedral that prompted him to do so.”

“In the morning, when we open the doors, there are two lines of people entering, one of visitors and one of the faithful who come for the first Mass,” the rector added. “We begin with the Angelus prayer around the baptistery at the entrance. I can assure you that the two lines converge at that moment, just as they do in the evening when we close the doors after a final prayer.”

He emphasized that “visiting the cathedral has important spiritual benefits.”

He referred to the famous Christian poet Paul Claudel, who wrote about how he was suddenly overwhelmed by the certainty of faith at Notre Dame, on Christmas Day 1886.

“I see many people experiencing the same thing,” Father Ribadeau Dumas said. “Visitors are struck by the life of faith that is lived at Notre Dame. We can find God through beauty, but also through the witness of faith lived by others. This is what impresses me most every day.”

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