From The Guardian, August 20:
Project leaders at Guédelon Castle tell how their woodwork savoir faire is proving a godsend for mission to restore Paris cathedral roof
At Guédelon Castle the year is 1253 and the minor nobleman, Gilbert Courtenay, has ridden off to fight in the Crusades, leaving his wife in charge of workers building the family’s new home: a modest chateau that befits his social position as a humble knight in the service of King Louis IX.
Here, in a forest clearing in northern Burgundy, history is being remade to the sound of chisel against stone and axe against wood, as 21st-century artisans re-learn and perfect long-forgotten medieval skills.
The Guédelon project was dreamed up as an exercise in “experimental archaeology” 25 years ago. Instead of digging down it has been built upward, using only the tools and methods available in the Middle Ages and, wherever possible, locally sourced materials. Now, in an unforeseen twist of fate, Guédelon is playing a vital role in restoring the structure and soul of Notre Dame cathedral.
Paris’s imposing 13th-century cathedral, a world heritage site, was consumed by fire in April 2019, destroying its complex roof structure, known as La Forêt because of the large number of trees used in its construction. The widespread view was that it would be impossible to rebuild it as it was.
“The roof frame was extremely sophisticated, using techniques that were advanced for the 12th and 13th centuries,” Frédéric Épaud, a medieval wood specialist, tells the Observer.
“After the fire, there were a lot of people saying it would take thousands of trees, and we didn’t have enough of the right ones, and the wood would have to be dried for years, and nobody even knew anything about how to produce beams like they did in the Middle Ages. They said it was impossible.....
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Huh. Apparently the powers-that-be rejected a few of the suggestions proffered by the public:
New Plan: La Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris 'Is Being Turned Into A Woke Theme Park'
Huh. Did not see that one coming....
and:
What's Holding Up the Work On La Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris?
I Hate The FT's Izabella Kaminska: Pontifex Edition
Earlier today the editor of the Financial Times' Alphaville property
published a very thoughtful mini-essay on centuries of storytelling,
using the fire at Notre Dame as her jumping off point and the cult of
belief that grew around the Marian apparitions in Fatima, Portugal as
her subject.
She covers quite a bit of ground relating to the prophecies and how the
revelations relate to Russia and current events. As I said, thoughtful,
and in contradistinction to the rather lighter tone taken in a 2013 FT
Alphaville post on pricing of tangibles which we've linked to a couple
times including last December's anniversary of the introduction of
bitcoin futures in "Izabella
Kaminska On The Intangibles that go into Valuation With a Look at
Contango in the Market for Water from the Grotto of Massabielle in the
Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, France".
Lourdes being another case of the veneration of an apparition of Mary, this one in France in 1858.
In today's Fatima/Notre Dame post Izabella touches on the role of Saint
Pope John Paul II in the overthrow of the Soviet communist system and
exhibits great restraint in comparing JP-the-deuce with the current Pope
Francis....
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