Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on fire.

Bartholomew Gallacher

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Le Monde features as headline, that the overall left structure of Notre Dame, including the towers, has been saved!

 

Cindy Claveau

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Why Notre Dame matters, in one Victor Hugo passage

Work began on Notre Dame in 1180. It took 200 years to finish. And in the time since the cathedral was largely completed in 1260, it has survived war and weather and changing fashions. It survived the loss of its spire once before, in 1786, after the spire’s supporting structure was so weakened by centuries of weathering that restorers removed it and replaced it. It survived riots from the Huguenots. It survived the French Revolution. It survived Napoleon. It survived World War II.


Notre Dame represents the most beautiful things that we as human beings can make if we pour unimaginable amounts of labor and wealth and resources and time into the effort. It’s a pinnacle of a certain kind.
 

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Apparently the tower is intact. Roof is lost, spire collapsed, but structure appears to be intact. Stained glass and organ also intact. It will take some time to catalog the artworks and relics to know what was lost.
 

GoblinCampFollower

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On a completely related note, I was catching up with a friend and we were talking about her mom still going to church as a Catholic, and this happened (my texts are on the right):

View attachment 227
We're on good terms, right? You wouldn't use your powers to curse me, right? ♥
 

Soen Eber

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My understanding that either a relic or a cathedral was the middle ages version of a moon shot. It placed you "on the map" and just having one turned your city into an economic engine and a seat of power ... well, more than it was, anyways, since it took serious resources to build one.
 

Brenda Archer

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You know that thread where we're talking about ancestors? Yeah. I might be quiet for a while. This has really been a shock. Some things are part of time and if they are lost time itself is changed forever.
 

Katheryne Helendale

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Asshat45 has advice for every situation. Right? :cautious:


"And when California burns you threaten to take away federal support... "
Oh, guess who now fancies himself as a firefighter and knows more than they do! He's a complete idiot, even in that role! Anyone with half a brain knows that dumping that much water all at once on a burning structure is going to collapse pretty much the entire structure!
 

Katheryne Helendale

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I heard that a dozen or so copper statues of the 12 Disciples and some other people were taken down a bit ago for restorative work and were thus saved from the fire. If the overall structure is still in decent shape, the roof and even the spire can be rebuilt, hopefully.
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

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My understanding that either a relic or a cathedral was the middle ages version of a moon shot. It placed you "on the map" and just having one turned your city into an economic engine and a seat of power ... well, more than it was, anyways, since it took serious resources to build one.
Well it was an innovation for sure; before the Gothic art style came along, Romanesque was the way to go, which looked completely different. The first ever to be considered Gothic church was Saint Denis near Paris, today a suburb of Paris, build by abbott Suger. After it was built the art style spread around France, England and the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation as well.

There were several innovations, which made building like this possible: the pointed arch, the ripped vault and the flying buttresses. Those are necessary to build so tall and light.

Since the people back then didn't know the physics behind such buildings, all was based on personal experience and on the buildings before your own project. There were also of course catastrophes that happened. The most famous is Beauvais in France, which has the tallest ceiling ever, collapsed at least two times, remains unfinished today and is still considered unstable.

The other is the cathedral of Amiens, another of the important ones in France; there was a flying buttress build to low to get al the pressure of the structure, so some pillars gave way and cracks appeared. This church would not stand today, if not in the 16. century some clever craftsman would have installed an iron tie rod running around the choir in the building, which is key to keeping the structure intact until today.
 

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On visiting the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto, Douglas Adams was impressed at how well the 14th-century structure had weathered the passage of time. His Japanese guide told him that it hadn’t weathered well at all; in fact it had burned to the ground twice in the 20th century.
“So this isn’t the original building?” Adams asked.
“But yes, of course it is.”
“But it’s been burned down?”
“Yes.”
“Twice.”
“Many times.”
“And rebuilt.”
“Of course. It is an important and historic building.”
“With completely new materials.”
“But of course. It was burned down.”
“So how can it be the same building?”
“It is always the same building.”
“I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise,” Adams wrote. The essence of a building is its design, the intention of the builder. The materials may decay and be replaced, but these are only instantiations of a persistent idea. “I couldn’t feel entirely comfortable with this view, because it fought against my basic Western assumptions,” Adams wrote, “but I did see the point.”