Despite the obvious risks, the French Government hastily decided to rebuild the roof and the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris in wood. In 1866, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the architect of the missing spire, wrote a relevant note in this sense, in an essay titled “Restauration”, taken from his Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (Dictionary of French Architecture from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century) :

"When restoring the roof of a building, the architects should not reject the steel construction only because the artisans of the Middle Ages did not use it. In our opinion, the steel roof trusses would help the architects to avoid the terrible chances of fire which have often been fatal to our ancient monuments.”

This quote is part of a long article that no one seems to have read in its entirety and that has never been quoted, but it’s a piece of advice that makes sense in this debate. Why should we jeopardize a symbol of the world heritage which was almost destroyed on the evening of April 15, 2019 ? When the Chartres Cathedral burned down in 1836, the state enthusiastically approved the reconstruction of a steel roof truss to prevent an irreparable disaster. Shouldn’t we apply the same precaution to Notre-Dame de Paris? At a time when forestry experts are swiftly selecting thousands of oak trees from the forests of France for the reconstruction of the roof and the emblematic spire by 2024, let’s mobilize against this absurdity! The Olympic Games in Paris are one thing, the restoration of Notre-Dame – which we must pass on to future generations for as long as possible – is quite another.

Let’s ask the President of the French Republic and the Minister of Culture to give up the idea of reconstructing the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris in wood before it’s too late!