Notre Dame, though wounded and inaccessible, remains a holy pilgrimage site in Paris for tourists and visitors. It is mandatory to take a selfie with the background of the cathedral, the cranes and the scaffolding. In these first days of August, the esplanade in front of the temple is very lively, with the presence of national and foreign public. After the hard years of covid, the French capital is once again the magnet it always was.
Those responsible for the reconstruction have had the original idea of taking advantage of the protective fence, in front of the main façade, to explain the works through giant comics commissioned from five prestigious illustrators of a genre that France, the homeland of Asterix, adores. The cartoonists were able to observe the works inside and talk with their protagonists. The exhibition of his vignettes has had the sponsorship and technical support of JCDecaux, one of the largest companies in the world in outdoor advertising.
Each comic emphasizes one aspect. The one by Adjim Danngar, of Chadian origin, reviews in great detail the engineering to prop up the building and avoid new collapses, such as the wooden arches to support the buttresses and the vaults. Sandrine Martin highlights in her drawings the complex logistic organization, the presence of professional climbers and the importance of vacuum cleaners and showers, to get rid of the harmful lead dust that impregnates everything.
Mathieu Sapin, known for having chronicled François Hollande's presidential campaign in cartoons, interviewed the head of the public body in charge of the reconstruction, General Jean-Louis Georgelin, and the chief architect, Philippe Villeneuve. The excerpt of these conversations became a comic. "I notice that he is very calm about the calendar (for the completion of the works)," the author asks Georgelin. And the general replies: “Obviously. If the chief hesitates, how do you want the troops to storm the fortress? In the vignette dedicated to the architect, Villeneuve explains that, from the beginning, he was in favor of rebuilding the cathedral as it was before the fire, including the arrow of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc that was incorporated into the temple in the 19th century.
There is no longer any debate about whether it would have been better to add a modern or futuristic element, for example a glass arrow, to the gothic building. “People love Notre Dame just as it was,” insists Françoise, a retiree from Rouen, visiting Paris, who is looking at the cathedral from the Montebello quay. "We want to see her just as she was," he adds. If the goal is a modern cathedral, a completely new one must be built, as was done in Barcelona with the Sagrada Familia. This is not the right place."
The influx of people to attend the rescue of Notre Dame gives a lot of life to the restaurants in the area and also to the old booksellers, the endearing bouquinistes, who offer their merchandise on both banks of the Seine and who disappeared from the urban landscape in the acute phase of the pandemic. Even the English bookstore Shakespeare and Company, a cultural icon, experiences an avalanche of customers and curious people to see the place. Patients, form a long queue in the street to access.
One can imagine that when Notre Dame reopens, the human flow here will be tremendous.
