Notre Dame de Paris

By now everyone, or nearly everyone, has heard or seen reports of the fire that destroyed the roof and spire of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Ken and I watched it live on television last evening, mesmerized by the spectacle, sickened by the horror, and emotionally exhausted by the near loss of one of the most famous and familiar of the monuments in a city we've both come to love.

An April river cruise in 2018, a view of the cathedral from the east.

Those firefighters did hard battle against an enemy much larger and stronger than themselves. It seemed futile from our vantage point on the couch, but they persevered and eventually brought the fire under control and saved the north tower (and its bells) from the flames. The best news is that nobody was killed in the conflagration.

The spire is gone as is the totality of the gray roof. I don't know how many of the windows were lost. Photo from May 2016.

Now the task turns to cleanup and planning for what is to come. The president has said that France will rebuild and, since the cathedral's structure seems to be intact, that's probably likely. But it will take years to clean up the damage, years to design and engineer a new roof structure, and perhaps decades to completely rebuild.

 A 1988 photo of the spire, now gone. The statues on the roof had been removed a couple of weeks ago for restoration.

These are two of my most recent photos and one old favorite of the cathedral. The first is from one year ago, taken from a tour boat during an evening cruise on the Seine. The second is from 2016, taken from the dome of the Panthéon on the Left Bank. The third is an old slide taken from the top of the south bell tower when Ken and I visited Paris in 1988, I think.