All language subtitles for rebuilding.notre.dame.s01e03.1080p.webrip.x264-cbfm[EZTVx.to]

(soft ethereal music)
(air moving gently)

On April the 15th, 2019

the world's most famous cathedral was ravaged by fire.

The roof went up in flames

and the lofty spire collapsed, crushing down

through the vaulted ceiling.

(ethereal music continues)

That day, Notre-Dame de Paris became a ruin.

(ethereal music continues)
(gentle wind blowing)

Once the fragile building was stabilized,

the decision was made to rebuild the cathedral

exactly as it was before.

But where to start?

How do you reconstruct today an 800-year-old monument

when no one knows how it was originally built?

(soft ethereal music continues)

So began a remarkable challenge in the very heart of Paris.

For the first time, archeologists, historians,

geologists, and specialists in ancient materials

as well as structural engineers and acoustic

and digital specialists explore the cathedral's entrails,

scan its vaults, and probe its foundations.

In the process, they reached spaces

that have been inaccessible for centuries

rediscovering all the skills and techniques

of Notre-Dame's original builders,

for they hold the key to its reconstruction.

In their efforts to balance both the earthly

and the sacred, the actual and the virtual, the scientists

and the architects both share a single obsession

to bring beloved Notre-Dame back to life.

(deep cathedral organ music)

(music echoing)

(fire surging)
(somber musical tones)

On the night of April the 15th, 2019, crowds gathered

to witness the unimaginable with their own eyes:

Notre-Dame de Paris in flames.

(emergency sirens approach, pass)

I suffered immensely

seeing the building in such danger.

Yet at the same time I thought,

"It's just like a continuation of the Middle Ages

"with its many fires."

It was strange to experience this in the 21st century

in part, due to the scale of the disaster

but also because it happened so many times

to medieval cathedrals in the past.

It was certainly a disaster, but it was nonetheless

something of a resurrection.

When day broke, the scale

of the destruction became apparent.

The world was horrified.

But what exactly was being mourned?

Notre-Dame is an image of permanence.

It's iconic.

It has appeared throughout the world

in billions of photographs and drawings, so it can't change.

It's made of stone and in our imagination

stone signifies permanence.

It's also at the heart of the notion of heritage.

It belongs to the country.

It's used by the church but it belongs to all French people.

Even if you're not a believer,

it's still a symbol of the sacred.

(slow, somber music)

In order to understand

what makes Notre-Dame such an extraordinary monument

such an emotionally significant building, archeologists

and scientists need to assess what the fire destroyed

from the top of its spire to its foundations

its space, its light, and its acoustics.

(working tool echoing)

(ethereal music)

Above and beyond its physical composition

the cathedral represents a shared memory

that links us to a common past.

A dream symbolized by its fallen spire.

The spire is

the crown of Gothic architecture.

It's an astounding construction.

It takes the dream of height to its very pinnacle.

The spire reaches for the highest of the high

and its pointed pyramidal structure touches the sky.

This vertical axis between earth

and sky is one of the great architectural innovations

of 12th century Gothic architecture.

The summit visible to all is a metaphor

for man's desire to ascend to the heavens.

Notre-Dame's spire which was about

to be renovated was where the disaster began.

(subtle deep rumbling)

Today, there's nothing left of it but charred wood.

The spire must be rebuilt in its entirety.

Notre-Dame's greatest loss was

its masterpiece, the roof's wooden framework,

and parts of the ribbed vaults.

The center of the nave was also destroyed

when the upper part of the spire tipped

over the temporary scaffolding, which luckily stood firm.

Without it, the whole spire would have fallen

into the vaults and brought the entire nave down with it.

(solemn musical note)

The lower part was held upright by the scaffolding

then boom, it collapsed right here.

(dark prestigious music)

It fell into the transept crossing

the most sacred part of the cathedral where the altar stood.

For General Georgelin, head of the reconstruction effort,

the mission is to open the cathedral

to visitors and worshipers as soon as possible.

We must conduct scientific research

and indepth study of the cathedral

but at the same time, there's building to be done.

A balance must be found.

This sort of iron cathedral we built here

inside the stone walls is the result

of rigorous planning.

We are constantly comparing our progress

against our schedule.

This challenge must be met

by Philippe Villeneuve, Chief Architect of the cathedral

but in charge of its reconstruction.

As an architect, I have a schedule to keep

and major structural issues to deal with.

I have to build here a scaffolding at least 96 meters high

weighing between six and 700 tons.

For this, I need a very stable and rigid floor

without any irregularities.

(working tools echoing)

To verify the solidity of the foundations

you have to examine what's under the floor, an opportunity

for archeologists to uncover more

of the cathedral's history.

(electronic music)

The first step in this process

of examination is non-invasive.

(electronic music continues)

Geophysicists from the Institute for Preventive Archeology

probed the cathedral's depth at the point

of its greatest devastation

(electronic music intensifies)

an area too dangerous for anyone to enter.

(electronic music continues)

What a strange sight.

This remote-controlled tractor driving over ground

where just 18 months earlier the priests would've stood.

After the removal of all the debris

the cathedral was virtually empty.

This was the opportunity one dreams of

to investigate what lies beneath the floor

and do a sort of X-ray of what we call

archeological anomalies,

like stone foundations

or the possible presence of tombs.

It was now or never.

The chance to do this will not happen again

for a very long time.

In a way, we're lucky to be here today.

(electronic music continues)

Inch by inch, the geo-radar scans

the entire floor of the cathedral, a process

that will last several days before the data can be analyzed

and presented to the architects.

The results have led the architects

to rethink their restoration project.

This has been possible only because we have here

such an exceptional collaboration.

After the floor stability is confirmed

the scaffolding at the transept crossing will tower

some 70 meters above the cathedral vaults.

The spires' construction can then begin.

But from which of the designs?

Because of the iconic

and powerfully symbolic nature of Notre-Dame de Paris,

it's reasonable to wonder how best

to proceed after such destruction.

Can such an iconic cathedral as Notre-Dame have

a contemporary architectural look imposed upon it?

Back in the 19th century, the architects

asked themselves the same question.

When Eugene Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus began

restoring Notre-Dame in 1844,

the original spire was already missing.

(hollow piano notes)

Weakened by age, it had been dismantled

some 50 years earlier.

When Lassus died prematurely during construction

Viollet-le-Duc decided to build a much more imposing spire

some 20 meters higher than the original one.

It's this architectural element

that galvanized peoples' emotions during the fire.

(cathedral bell tolling)
(bird wings swooping)

(crowd bustling)

(cathedral bells continue ringing)

(soft tense electronic music)

That night, hundreds of players of Assassin's Creed

dusted off their old video game set in Paris

at the time of the French Revolution.

(population clamoring)

They climbed to the very summit of Notre-Dame

and shared their exploits on social media.

The online generation was playing homage to the spire

that had just fallen to the flames.

Though in truth, at the time of the Revolution,

the medieval spire had already disappeared.

One of the key elements

of Assassin's Creed is its historical reconstruction

of cultural, material, architectural, and social dynamics.

That's a fundamental part of the game

that makes the experience as immersive as possible.

We could've represented Notre-Dame without the spire.

We asked ourselves that question,

but felt it would lack something.

And when we had our players test it, they complained

that part of the cathedral was missing.

So we chose to represent Viollet-le-Duc's spire

the one everyone knows, and which is the most iconic

even though it's actually an anachronism.

(soft pulsing electronic music)

The archives of the 19th century restoration

detail how Viollet-le-Duc transformed Notre-Dame

into the archetype of the Gothic cathedral.

(soft pulsing electronic music continues)

A church tells a story of sedimentation.

In the Middle Ages, as with today, a church is

only legitimate as long as it shows

all the periods it has lived through.

So Viollet-le-Duc designed something

which is radically different in part

but which also retains the memory of the original spire.

To start with, it's a spire

with a medieval form and a medieval technique,

a wooden framework covered with lead.

But its height is something totally new.

So was the concept of adding figures in tiers.

This is a creative restoration.

It's neither a reproduction

nor a complete departure from form.

(majestic orchestral musical note)

He even goes further.

He is perfectly at ease using

contemporary 19th century materials

for the restoration of a medieval building.

He considers himself a direct heir of the medieval builders.

He reasons that if his medieval ancestors

had known these methods,

of course they would have used them.

He doesn't do pure identical reproduction.

He observes, he enhances, and he perfects.

Medieval Notre-Dame had not been designed

to hold such a weight.

It was a massive structural challenge for the architect

who had to deconstruct and reconstruct the walls,

the vaults, and the wooden frame of the transept crossing.

(majestic musical notes continue)

In the end, Viollet-le-Duc rewrote the past

and confused his successors.

We didn't know what supported

this colossal spire.

We discovered that Viollet-le-Duc built new pillars

above the crossing pillars hidden in the masonry.

We found four platforms extending behind the Gothic pillars.

And that's where, on a lead plate,

the architect placed the wooden base of the spire.

We had to clear them in order

to have a reliable base ourselves

and we found they were perfectly solid.

Now we could rebuild the spire in exactly the same place

as Viollet-le-Duc's to the nearest centimeter.

(deep bass piano notes)

Notre-Dame's spire was

an exception innovation for the time.

It launched a debate about the restoration of monuments.

(deep bass piano notes)

The 16 copper statues designed by Viollet-le-Duc himself

became symbols of this modern approach.

(deep bass piano musical notes)

They were removed just four days before the fire

and it has taken two years to restore them.

(deep bass piano musical notes)

Awaiting their return to Notre-Dame, they're on display

at the Parisian Museum of Architecture

amongst an astonishing collection of life-size casts

from some of France's most remarkable medieval monuments.

(deep bass piano musical notes)

The museum was created in the 19th century

as a tribute to the skills of the cathedral builders.

It was designed by Viollet-le-Duc himself,

who appears as one of the saints on his spire.

He has his own little army,

as he called it, an army of craftsmen

and trades people whom he fully trusted

and who greatly contributed to his project.

It was his master carpenter, Bellieu

and his lead craftsman, Mondeaux,

who would later build the Statue of Liberty.

They worked with Viollet-le-Duc throughout his life.

They rediscovered and perfected the methods used

by medieval builders.

Those artisans completely understood

the Gothic essence of cathedrals.

They were possessed by the spirit of their predecessors.

And that enabled them to recreate a past

that was totally foreign to them

but that they completely understood.

With painters Augustunel and Marachal du Mes

Viollet-le-Duc was to resurrect an art

that had been lost in France for over two centuries.

Stained glass.

It was an art that flourished

with the advent of Gothic architecture.

It had a significant spiritual effect

by bathing the faithful in colored light

thus giving them a sensation

of entering a celestial Jerusalem.

Not a lot of architecture is capable

of generating such energy in a human congregation

and it does so by bathing them in light.

Everything is designed to work on the senses.

So glass is a great material

because it offers no obstacle to light

and becomes a symbol of creation itself.

(operatic music, vocals)

The art is to use materials to create an empty space

that will be a gathering place,

a place of welcome and a place of light.

And that's the genius of this architecture.

It creates an emptiness, but one that's inhabited,

that's full of life.

(fading organ note)

(wind blowing)
(tower bell tolling)

A few hundred meters from Notre-Dame de Paris

the remarkable multicolored stained glass windows

of the Saint-Chapelle came

as a real aesthetic shock for the Middle Ages.

Here, everything is light.

(tense musical note)

Erected in 1248 by Saint Louis on his return

from the Crusades as a resting place for the relics

of the Passion of Christ, the Sainte-Chapelle was

to inspire Guillaume d'Auvergne

the Bishop of Notre-Dame de Paris an even greater vision.

The rose windows of Notre-Dame are the pinnacle

of the art of stained glass.

These radiant 13th century masterpieces were a vehicle

for the soul to travel to the spiritual realms.

That they survived the fire is nothing short of a miracle.

After the fire, it was a pleasant surprise

to find the stained glass still intact.

There was just one point close to the roof

where there were some plain, white panes

shaped like lozenges, which had gone.

But all of the adorned stained glass was there.

Not only that, it was in surprisingly good condition.

Claudine Roselle runs the stained glass group.

It's her job to analyze all the stained glass windows

and devise a system for cleaning and restoring them.

When you work on stained glass

from this period, you can't help being moved by it.

It's the same for everyone.

It's a sort of primary emotion.

You just think wow, this is amazing

and thank you to all those who left us something

we can preserve and that enriches us.

Then when we have to get to work and make sure

the future generations can also see it

while still preserving its original form.

So we start with a decontamination.

This won't be a problem.

Just a brush with a suction tip

should do the trick.

(majestic organ musical notes)

Long before April the 15th, 2019, years

of urban pollution had dulled all

of Notre-Dame's stained glass with a layer

of fine particles that in the fire turned

into a gypsum crust which now has to be removed.

(majestic organ musical notes fades)

Here's what we get.

On the surface, there's crystallization everywhere.

Yes.

And these tiny balls of pure lead.

These nodules of lead have come

You can see these deposits of calcium sulfate are making

the glass opaque, so during restoration, we have

to remove them very carefully so as to preserve it.

(majestic organ musical notes)

More than 1,000 square meters

of stained glass have been dismantled to protect them

for the duration of the project.

They will be analyzed, cleaned, and restored.

It's a colossal task coordinated by Claudine Roselle

which will be undertaken

in stained glass workshops all over France.

(sustained majestic organ musical note)

(sustained musical note fades)

Having access to all the windows

during the restoration is something

that never usually happens.

It means we can examine all of the stained glass.

It's worth remembering that some of these windows date back

as far as the 12th and 13th centuries.

It's an historical record of French stained glass

from the 12th century onwards

and was one of Notre-Dame's greatest features.

(soft electronic music)

This veritable jigsaw puzzle

of glass has always confounded the experts.

The scaffolding has enabled Claudine Roselle

and other historians to take a close look

at the three rose windows,

as they are too fragile to remove.

(soft electronic music continues)

It's a question of knowing

what we're working with

because if we don't bother asking what's been restored

what's been replaced, and when and how and why,

we'll take each element for granted

and won't know whether it's a truly ancient piece

or a 19th century replacement,

because the way we treat it won't be the same.

(soft electronic music continues)

The rose window

that historians are prioritizing is

the oldest and least well-known, the western rose.

Visible from the outside but hidden

by the great organ on the inside.

(soft electronic music continues)

What should we do for a first?

The heads?

Yeah.

I think the heads are the originals.

The flesh tones are the same

as others you see elsewhere.

And the glass is really very thick.

Look at the brightness on the hand

and the thickness of the glass.

And it's wonderful seeing what we call ruby flash.

So the reds are authentic.

They're very uneven

but that just gives the red glass an extraordinary vitality.

You can see the difference here in this new green panel.

The green glass is heavy, uneven, and it's not flat.

It's got tiny bubbles everywhere

whereas this one here is flat and the color isn't as dense

as in the 13th century glass.

After 28 panes that make up the rose

11 are original and mixed in with 16th century panes

and 17th and 19th century restorations, a real puzzle

that only the trained eye of a historian can solve.

So was this one of the panes we made

in the 16th century?

15th, 16th?

I think it's hard to be exact,

but I'd say the turn of the century.

Probably around 1500

with this type of what's known as sable de brushwork

where the gray is in vertical brush strokes

to give this textured finish.

It gives a marvelous relief to the animals' fleece.

It archeologically fascinating

an excellent example of medieval work, juxtaposed

with the 19th century restoration of the hind quarters.

The 19th century paint work hasn't stood

the test of time very well.

Viollet-le-Duc found stained glass there that bore traces

of much work done on it over the centuries.

His objective was not to preserve

these various interventions

as modern archeologists would do

but to restore the edifice based

on his idea of authenticity.

His was an idealized vision of what was first conceived

and hopefully close to its original state.

(tense sustained musical note)

When Viollet-le-Duc began the restoration

of Notre-Dame in 1845, the original stained glass windows

with the exception of the three roses had been removed

by the clergy in the 18th century.

In those early days of the Neoclassical period

they preferred transparent glass.

Wanting to give back to the cathedral all the color

of its Gothic light, the architect trained

the best painters of his time.

The panels by Merichelle Dumas, one of the great masters

of color, have been removed for the first time in 150 years

and are currently being cleaned.

(tense sustained musical note)

We've tended to overlook

the 19th century work of Merichelle Dumas due

to a slight preference

for the 12th, 13th, and earlier centuries.

But looking at it from below, one wonders

what kind of glass he used.

How did he achieve that mosaic effect?

Was it with a crystalline glass paste?

What is surprising is that when it's right there

before your eyes, you can see

it's just a painting technique.

(tense sustained musical note)

For 19th century restorers, recreating

that Gothic light wasn't only achieved with stained glass.

The paint on the walls also played its part

in our whole perception of color.

Yet the color and light have been lost from Notre-Dame

well before April 2019.

Centuries of pollution have dulled it.

The fire added a fresh layer of lead particles.

One of the first priorities of the restoration was

to rediscover the light by removing all the dust

that had darkened the cathedral.

Gradually, the walls have recovered their lost whiteness.

In one of the chapels of the choir,

the Saint-Ferdinand chapel, restoration

of its 19th century murals

and stained glass has recently been completed.

In the 12th century, you only had

to approach a cathedral to experience its light.

When one of the faithful

or even just a visitor entered the building,

they were plunged into a strange environment

where everything from floor to ceiling glowed with color.

In the Middle Ages, color was considered

to be a kind of light.

So the church did indeed give the impression

of being an intermediate space between earth and sky.

(gentle violin music)

Viollet-le-Duc and Lassus understood this perfectly.

The figurative paintings on the walls, as we found them,

are very close in shade to the colors used

for the stained glass, intermediate colors,

essentially pastel, such as sea greens, pinks or pale blues

which create a starry, polychromatic effect on the walls,

totally harmonizing with the stained glass

which wasn't the case in the Middle Ages.

They revived a medieval atmosphere

but the wasn't medieval at all.

(gentle orchestral music)

We've studied a lot of stained glass here

and the truth is this this the last time

I'll ever be so close to it.

Once they're all back in place, they won't be touched

until the next restoration in perhaps 100, 150,

or 200 years time.

So it's a privilege to have this time with them to take care

of them, and to do our best to study, describe,

and preserve them for future generations.

(tense violin music)

Notre-Dame not only lost its spire

and its light in the fire, it also lost its voice.

On the 15th of April, 2019, both its big

and its small bells fell silent.

(tense organ musical note)

Prayers and hymns gave way to the din of building work.

(machine drilling)

(metal clanging)

(tools banging)

(soft wind blowing)
(working tools echoing)

The partial destruction of the vaulted ceiling meant

that Notre-Dame also lost its acoustics,

that diffusion of sound characterized by the balance

between the volume of the space

and the stone that encloses it.

The cathedral, Notre-Dame in particular

also represents the immaterial.

Sound is immaterial.

At the heart of a cathedral, the services are sung

seven times a day.

The mass is celebrated twice a day

and every priest could celebrate mass on any of the altars.

Up until the French Revolution, at least,

Notre-Dame was bathed in liturgical song

from morning to night.

(rising organ music, aria singing)

The sound of the cathedral was a liberation

from the din of the outside world.

As soon as you walk through its door

the sonic universe is transformed.

Each cathedral has its own acoustics.

And Notre-Dame lost its special sound in the fire.

Before it reopens, it's the job of Mylene Pardoen

sound archeologist and head of the acoustic group

to restore both the memory and the experience of that sound.

(deep pulsing bass note)

Do it again.

To recreate that immersive sonic experience

she uses a similar architectural space,

the Cathedral La Saints, which was the inspiration

for the builders of Notre-Dame.

The sound of the past has been lost.

What can be found though are the sonic objects of the past

which are still in place today.

We capture them.

It's like catching butterflies.

We are sound hunters.

I'm an archeologist of the soundscape,

not a sound designer.

What I'm seeking here are the conditions required

to recreate the sounds.

Particularly the sound so characteristic

of a cathedral, that of its bells.

(sustained tense musical note)

The bells of Saints share

the same characteristics of those of Notre-Dame

which is why Saints was chosen.

It came from the same foundry, at the same period,

and that have the same tuning.

They're the bells we have to record.

(rhythmic creaking, gliding)

(bell tolling)

What was it that these bells tolled in the past?

Nowadays, everyone has a watch and knows the time.

But when you go back in history,

people didn't have clocks or watches.

They relied on the bells to tell them the time.

What's more, as each bell has its own character

they provided a geographical landmark

(bell ringing)

We have to redefine the historical context of Notre-Dame

in order to see the link between its restoration

and my highly scientific study of its soundscape.

(chisels tapping)

A defining moment of its history was

the construction site at the end of the 12th century.

A few hundred kilometers from Paris,

at the experimental archeology sight of Mont Carmel

Mylene is recording craftsmen working with period tools.

(chisels tapping)

Recording sound

isn't just about turning on a microphone,

it's also about understanding an action, before and after.

(fire crackling)

Our job is to be totally aware

of the craftsman's whole physical process.

(tools pounding)

(ax chopping)

Mylene Pardoen is attempting

to recreate the soundscape of the construction

of Notre-Dame in 1170.

When stone masons, master glaziers, blacksmiths,

and wood cutters all worked by ear

and knew the sounds all their materials made.

(ax chopping)

When we record a sound

it gives us a lot of different information.

We just recorded an ax hitting a knot in the wood.

(ax chopping)

The ax, as it cuts, has a particular ring to it.

We've learned a lot about craftmen's work

and that could be relevant to our future work.

(anvil clanging)

The recordings she's made all

over France culminate in the archeologist recreating

in the studio the soundscape of the building

of Notre=Dame in 1170

when only the outs had been built.

(construction sounds)

We're at the point of bringing together

the past, the present, and even the future.

Because everything we're recording now will become part

of Notre-Dame's history for future generations.

(melancholic symphonic music)

Listening to the past

Mylene Pardoen's meticulous work is an important

historical study for all the researchers, but it's

above all an educational tool to give the general public

an immersive experience of Notre-Dame.

(melancholic symphonic music continues)

Where can people in a place,

in a society, be allowed to congregate

and become conscious of their common humanity?

(operatic music, aria singing)

The buildings in a city where people can assemble

on a large scale are extremely precious.

They enable them to become conscious

of the group experience.

Notre-Dame means Our Lady.

She is ours and brings us awareness of our common humanity.

(operatic music, aria singing)

(organ music rising)

At the transept crossing

and right down into the very entrails of the cathedral

the past is now being brought to light.

Geo-radar scans have supplied partial results,

sufficient though to reveal an impressive network

of underground brick-built heating conduits.

Geologists had to dig down to determine the solidity

of these conduits known as breaching

before building the scaffolding to reconstruct the spire.

Some breaching work was done

by Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century

and we knew it had slightly weakened the zone.

But we didn't know to what extent

it had damaged pre-existing elements.

(working tools echoing)

Our role is that of preventive archeologists, so we need

to slot into the site's restoration schedule, be aware

of all the technical constraints,

and at the same time, answer

the numerous scientific questions that arise.

(working tools echoing)

The geologists' endoscopic camera revealed

a cavity deeper than the others,

just as the archeologists expected.

They'd found a tomb, albeit an empty one.

What Notre-Dame shows us is the consequence

of secular stratification.

It's an archeological and historical lasagna.

As even the 12th century cathedral replaced one

that was probably founded in the 4th century,

right up to the spire, there are layers upon layers

spanning 17 centuries of art and history.

There are few monuments that have never changed

their function over time, this one though has always been

a cathedral of the Paris Diocese.

The archeological dig led

by Cristophe Besnier has made an important find.

Beneath a heavy stone slab, a human-shaped

lead sarcophagus has been found in good condition.

The floors of churches

and cathedrals are studded with tombs.

To be buried beneath the transept crossing

was a special privilege.

The last burials at Notre-Dame date back

to the 18th century.

This slab is older than what was initially thought.

It appears to rest on a sandy backfill

of early 14th century masonry.

In fact, we've discovered a medieval layer

barely 40 centimeters below Viollet-le-Duc's paving.

So the found sarcophagus could be dating

from the 14th century.

Archeologists removed the top slab

and carefully cleared the hulled coffin.

It was virtually intact, but there were two holes

in the lead structure that bothered them.

After so many centuries underground

what would be left inside?

So the geologists were called in.

An endoscopic camera introduced into the sarcophagus

revealed bones and a perfectly preserved skull

with around it hair, leaves, and scraps of cloth,

a remarkable scientific discovery

that awaits a more detailed laboratory analysis.

It was a really nice surprise

to find beyond the breaching a large number

of preserved remains from the 18th century and earlier.

(soft electronic music)

Closer to the choir but only a few meters

from the sarcophagus, they made another find.

Beneath the paving, they unearthed blocks and fragments

of sculptures with a remarkable level

of fine detail and color work.

(soft electronic music continues)

The archeologists and historians believe them

to be 13th century.

It's an incredible stroke

of luck to have found them.

Up till now, it's our most surprising find.

They were parts of an ancient rude screen

built around 1230.

For now, scaffolding has replaced the rude screen,

the wall of sculptures representing Christ's Passion

that cordoned off the choir, the actual place of worship.

It was demolished in the 18th century.

(ethereal music)

It was all carefully removed

and buried at the foot of the choir

out of respect for its sacred nature.

(working tools echoing)

It was all buried with care

here at ground level.

There are faces, hands, feet, torsos,

cloth draperies, mostly human representations,

probably characters from the Bible.

There're also some representations of churches,

a lot of decorative elements, as well.

Leaves, bunches of fruit, grapes perhaps.

Once all of these elements are reassembled,

we'll have a good idea of how the rude screen looked.

(soft electronic music resumes)

Archeologist Cristophe Besnier

in charge of the transept dig has found more

than 1,000 blocks of sculpture fragments.

Each piece will be inventoried, cleaned, then studied

and preserved by archeologists who hope

to rebuild the rude screen.

(soft electronic music continues)

The digital group technicians will integrate them

in the virtual cathedral they're creating,

gradually pieced together from the various finds

of the last two years.

Anyone involved in heritage work has

one eye on the past and one eye on the future.

And in the modern world, that involves computers.

(soft electronic music continues)

Such a system shows the richness and the growing complexity

of a multi-disciplinary examination.

It lets us combine the physical reality

of the cathedral space with the representation

of all we've learned by studying it.

Combining information in this way creates a new type

of heritage to be handed down to future generations.

(soft electronic music continues)

At Notre-Dame, the actual reconstruction

will soon begin.

Cristophe Besnier and his team have having to make way

for the huge scaffolding that will fill the transept.

They're getting ready for one of the most delicate moments

of their amazing research work,

the removal of the lead sarcophagus.

(soft, tense music)

(chain link clinking)

(soft, tense music continues)

(tense music softens, calms)

Now that this phase of the dig is completed

the adventure is set to continue elsewhere

in universities and laboratories and ultimately,

in a quite unique place in the town of Saleux

a few kilometers north of Paris

an immense warehouse designed to store for future study

all that's found at Notre-Dame.

Immediately after the fire,

the on-site researchers felt the need

to preserve the fire damaged remains

in the belief that they had their own heritage value.

They decided to establish a storage facility

to enable further research where large numbers

of researchers can enjoy good conditions

and comfortable access for years to come

so they can conduct long-term studies

without disturbing the on-site work.

And their work will be valuable in understanding the history

of the cathedral as well as other current scientific issues.

(ethereal music)

Everyone that took part

in the scientific work on-site knows

that there will be a before

and after the fire of Notre-Dame.

Saleux and its collection of remains is

an unprecedented experiment, one that challenges

all our notions of conservation, the archeological remains

and all the memories of a cathedral saved forever.

(soft tense music)