This is a pivotal moment for the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris which has been playing for two days in the small town of Briey in Lorraine. The assembly of the base, the stool, of the future spire of Notre-Dame in exceptional oak wood, is indeed the subject of a dress rehearsal for the assembly of its base, nearly four years after the fire of the cathedral. The "blank mounting" aims to ensure that the different elements of the base will fit together properly when they are assembled on the roof of Notre-Dame.

And the figures are already dizzying: the spire will measure 66 meters, like its nineteenth-century model. It will consist of five parts, including this base assembled in Lorraine, on four supports made of oaks of exceptional sizes, harvested in the forest of Bercé, in the Sarthe.

Objective of the maneuver of these two days, lift the feet of this "stool" slowly, using cranes, so that they fit to the millimeter in the central deck. The elements of the stool will then be dismantled and "transported in the next few days to the site in Paris, where they will be assembled and craned before taking their final place, thirty meters high, at the four corners of the crossing of the transept," said a spokeswoman for the site.

The "real" installation, scheduled for next April

This blank assembly is a "pivotal moment", comments Rémi Fromont, one of the three chief architects of the reconstruction of the monument. "We go from theory to practice, it's the dress rehearsal before the real lifting and the installation on the cathedral in April," he explained. "For the past four months, we have traced and validated the plans, then traced the spurs on the ground according to the ancestral method of stitching and lineage," explains Patrick Jouenne, responsible for carpenters. "It's the construction site of a lifetime," he continues. "This reconstruction is a masterpiece." Rebuilding Notre-Dame also means "perpetuating the tradition in tracing and assembling carpenters of the time," says Mathias Gauthier-Morfoise, works manager at Cruard, one of the companies in charge of the project.



Appointed by Emmanuel Macron to lead the restoration of the cathedral, General Jean-Louis Georgelin is pleased to see that "the commitment made in terms of deadlines will be kept, with patience and tenacity. The reputation of the France is at stake! (...) Soon we will see in the sky of Paris the arrow and its rooster, "he adds. "Delivery of the stool is scheduled for April 15, 2023, four years after the fire."

As a reminder, the famous spire, identical to the previous one designed by the architect Viollet-le-Duc and which had collapsed in the fire of April 15, 2019, "should appear again in the sky of Paris by the end of the year," said in early February the public institution project owner of the reconstruction site. It will also culminate at 96 meters from the ground, with the same original materials, oak for the structure (220 tons) and lead for the cover and ornaments (140 tons). The cathedral is scheduled to reopen in late 2024, according to the Ministry of Culture.

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