Géraldine had a surprise for me: A ticket to the virtual tour of the Notre Dame cathedral, which meant I had to get to the city and navigate my way to the Île de la Cité. With it also came a chaperoned train trip from Triel to Gare Saint Lazare, during which she gave me very precise instructions on how to take line 14 of the metro and go down precisely three stations, and from there take line 4 to the Notre Dame station. Finally, with much trepidation, warnings, and a lot of bon conseil she figuratively let go of my hand and cast me adrift (even figuratively, the grip of a French maman is particularly tenacious). Dutifully I took line 14, but once I got to line 4 I figured it was too early to just go hang out near Notre Dame, so I changed the plan and kept going on line 4 for about twelve stations, and then jumped into line 10 for another eleven stations, until I alighted in the 16th arrondissement, where I walked a few blocks to the Laboratoire Aerodynamique Eiffel, which I had wanted to visit for a couple of years now. This is a working laboratory and they don’t take visitors for tours, so I had to content myself with walking around it and peering through the windows, feeling that I was sharing on an important monument to engineering.
Gustave Eiffel became quite interested on
the interaction between his famous tower and the wind that buffeted it from
time to time, so shortly after finishing construction of the tower in 1889 he
started dropping all sorts of objects from it, presumably to try to understand
the frictional forces that acted upon them (in truth, he was probably just
being a little hooligan). Pretty soon dropping objects from the tower grew old,
so in 1909 he built a first air tunnel at the foot of the tower to test the
same bodies he had dropped, and by 1912 he had transferred his research
operations to the current location of the Laboratoire Aerodynamique,
where he kept building bigger and bigger tunnels (the invention of the wind
tunnel is generally attributed to the Englishman Frank H. Wenham in 1871, and
the Wright Brothers built a little one in 1901 to test their airplane models).
The 1912 wind tunnel featured an open jet of air with a closed test chamber and
introduced a downstream diffuser to improve the efficiency of the air flow, an
innovation that put modern aeronautical engineering on a solid footing.
Having satisfied my curiosity I decided to see the city, and
following the advice of Géraldine I decided to take the bus, rather than the
metro, and had a delightful hour riding along the Seine, past the Eiffel Tower,
the Orthodox Cathedral, ending in the Latin Quarter, where I admired the famous
University of La Sorbonne and strolled across its Medieval Garden. Oops, look
at the time! Better to head for Notre Dame and my virtual tour.
I had no idea what to expect from a “virtual tour”, but I
will start by telling you it is the most fantastic thing I have ever seen. If
there is any chance you might be able to get to Paris in the next six months
feel free to skip the rest of this blog entry so I don’t spoil the magnificent
surprise. … Are you sure you want to keep reading? … OK, so be it. First you go
into the basement, where there is a very nice exhibition describing the
devastating fire of April 15, 2019, and the labor of the many architects, civil
engineers, and armies of gifted artisans who undertook the stabilization,
cleaning, and restoration of the damaged structure. They are almost done, and
the team has announced that the cathedral will open its doors to the public on
December 8, 2024. Then you go into the launch room, where you are equipped with
a backpack loaded with batteries and electronics, and a helmet that completely
cuts out your vision. I came right behind a couple and their teenage daughter,
so throughout the experience I had to make sure I didn’t bump into them;
eventually I learned to look for their glowing avatars surrounding me, which
allowed me to keep a respectful distance. They give you a bit of practice about
how to walk with the helmet so you don’t crash into the walls and then the
adventure begins. You are guided by one of the medieval masons, who walks ahead
of you into a narrow medieval street to show you the place where the new
cathedral will be built. Now and then he makes a sudden turn and walks through
you, which is very disturbing, but eventually you learn to keep him at arm’s
length. You keep walking along the crews of working men (carpenters, masons,
and artists), moving aside to avoid a stone block, or ducking under a buttress
to go in and out of the construction zone. The nave of the church becomes
taller and taller, so you have to crane your neck to see some of the details
until you are invited to climb on a beam being lifted by ropes, and you soar up
into the air feeling a little noxious. Cannot avoid peering anxiously down, or
toward the approaching roof, but pretty soon you relax and let your view wander
over the enormous nave, the glorious colored glass windows, and the tiny people
below.
The scene goes blurry and all of a sudden you are staring at
Saint Louis consecrating the main altar with a golden crown of spines, and the
Princes of the Church walking past you to take their places in the choir, as
the first notes of the monumental organ are heard. As you are admiring the
grandeur of the medieval cathedral the scene once again goes blurry and the
crown of spines in the altar is replaced by La Pietà sculpted by Coustou in
1723 to satisfy a vow of Louis XIII.
Like magic you are transported to the roof of Notre Dame, to
admire the wood structure and its bells, the spire covered by lead foil, the
stone buttresses, the gargoyles, and all the amazing detail of this amazing
cathedral. The scene gets then fills with smoke and all of a sudden you are in
the midst of the 2019 fire, watching in anguish as the roof of the name
collapses and the spire comes tumbling down. From your high vantage point, the
burnt nave looks like a charred corpse with open arms. It is hard to hold the
tears seeing this masterpiece of devotion and hard work turn into a massive
ruin.
But then the work of consolidation and cleanup starts, and
you have to avoid the tethered workers flying through the air as scaffoldings
are erected and charred beams are removed. Suddenly every space is filled with
febrile activity. Stone masons are chipping each block to the perfect
dimension, carpenters are fitting enormous beams to form trusses that are
raised into the air, glaciers are cleaning the glass panels and rebuilding the
circular rosette windows, and artisans of all kinds are sculpting, hammering
metal foils, and painting frescos, each and everyone of them adding step by
step to the magnificent reconstruction of Notre Dame. The final scene is a
glimpse of the near future, where the Archbishop receives from the construction
team the key of the main gates, which after blessing it he uses to open the
enormously massive gates, and we all enter the most glorious cathedral of
modern times.
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