60 minutes this week, journalist Bill Whitaker entered Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. After five years of careful work to clean up and restore damage caused by the 2019 fire and eliminate decades of dirt and dirt - the Cathedral was opened to the public last December.
Now, the worship on her altar will likely expand to those who make it possible.
It took hundreds of crafters to repair quickly and so meticulously, and it was so real to Notre Dame's past. On Cité, they are called companionDevoir Compagnons' shorthand or duty companion. These workers were part of the French organization of craftsmen and craftsmen, which dated back to the Middle Ages and maintained their vitality in the Middle Ages, such as stone sculptures and iron forging.
At Notre Dame, these carpenters, roofers and art restorators have been guardians of history. The stained glass window glows again. The stone walls now scrubbed by fire ash and dirt during the times are newly bright. The organs have their own choir, including 8,000 pipes, each of which is freshly calibrated.
Each companion The resurrection of Notre Dame Cathedral is key before the cathedral door reopens this month. Some people shared their work with Whitaker and 60 minutes.
In front of the main altar of Notre Dame, in the heart of the cathedral, we met Olivia Salaun, who spent most of the year, spending most of the year carefully restoring a well-designed marble work called "marquetry", which was created in the 17th century.
"It's very rare to have such a beautiful marble trojan in France," Salaun told Whitaker shortly before the church reopened.
She explained that she and other marble restorers had to wait for scaffolding near the altar to start work. As a result, they must work quickly to complete their repair between February and July 2024.
Salaun showed Whitaker that there was a specific location on the floor where a marble was eliminated. She and her colleagues carved a new piece that fits it perfectly into the gap, making it look as if it was there all the time.
"It has to have the same rendering, so it won't be attracted to the new marble," Sarauen told Whitaker.
A meticulous attention to detail can be found everywhere in the restoration of Notre Dame, even the part facing heaven.
On the roof, the 60-minute teenager met a teenager who worked as part of an apprentice metal worker last year, helping to get lead adorn the roof of the cathedral. When Notre Dame was burned, Mazzantti was only 12 years old, which was part of a generation because of the work they saw in the cathedral, which was part of the “Notre Dame effect” on traditional crafts and industries.
Mazzantti told 60 Minutes, "Yes, Notre Dame has had a big impact on young people," he explained, and she was proud of her small role. “You said to yourself that you left your mark on this historic monument.”
Diana Castillo, a painter, has had an impact on the cathedral by helping to bring the masterpieces of Notre Dame back to life. She has been working in many small chapels of the cathedral, and centuries ago, murals were painted on stone walls and ceilings. The time of water, soot and humidity are accustomed to extinguishing flames, causing ash and damage to many paintings.
In some places, repairers have to inject glue into the syringe to carefully dry and peel the paint back onto the wall. They also have a lot of cleaning. To see there were 60 minutes to compare the photos taken by Castillo, then she and other restorators started working, and now their work became incredibly vivid.
Castillo stressed that they just cleaned the paintings, otherwise there was no reinforcement of the pigment. She said the true colors were full of vitality in the Middle Ages.
"I'm sure a lot of people will be shocked," Castillo said.
This is not the first time in its history that Notre Dame needs a wholesale restoration.
The cathedral was built in the 13th century and needed to be restored during the Louis XIV period when renovation began in 1699.
Decades later, the original spikes of Notre Dame Cathedral were damaged, so much so that they were cleared in the late 1700s. At that time, the spire was not the only disrepair. During the First French Revolution, after the ban on Catholic worship in Paris, the mob robbed and destroyed the cathedral. A mob tore up and beheaded the statue of 28 Jewish kings, created in 1230 and was initially placed on the western facade because the crowd mistakenly believed the statue portrayed the French king.
By the Second French Revolution in 1830, the revolutionaries had wreaked havoc that the Paris authorities considered demolishing the building.
That is, until the writer intervenes.
French journalist Agnes Poirier told 60 minutes in early 2023 that “Victor Hugo is the reason she is still standing.”
Hugo was a politician and powerful campaigner who wanted to keep the cathedral. Hugo wrote in a pamphlet called "The War of Demolition": "There are two things in a building: its use and its beauty. Its use belongs to its owner, its beauty; it is destroyed to transcend its own rights."
After releasing the pamphlet, Hugo published his novel "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" in 1831, which is known in French as "Paris Paris". This novel is a direct success. Not only did it make Quasimodo famous throughout France, because the illustrations of the central characters of the novel were mass printed, but it also turned Notre Dame Cathedral into a national symbol.
By 1842, the French government decided to restore the cathedral, and two years later, they chose a young architect named Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc to complete the work. During his architectural education, Viollet-le-Duc traveled around France, detailing the medieval monuments and cathedrals he saw. This background means that when Viollet-le-duc added a new spire to Notre Dame in 1859, it seemed to be the originality of the cathedral.
Viollet-le-Duc's transformation to Notre Dame took more than twenty years to complete. The current restoration took only five years. The day after Notre Dame burned in 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron promised Notre Dame will be rebuilt in 2024, thanks companion - Thousands of donors have funded the restoration work - Macron's plan has been achieved.
"This is what a country is for me: a group of people with the same history, values, the same language, and have done a lot of great things together and are ready to do other new things together," Macron said to 60 minutes last year. "This is a big thing we've done together in the last five years."
Photos and videos courtesy of Diana Castillo, AFP and Getty Images
The video above was originally published on December 1, 2024. It was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann.