On April 15, the National Building Museum (NBM) opened a new exhibition, Notre-Dame de Paris: The Augmented Exhibition, which brings visitors into an immersive environment that captures the past, present, and future of this central piece of Parisian culture and French Gothic architecture. The exhibition, now on view through October 9, commemorates the third anniversary of a fire that broke out during renovations to the cathedral’s spire, and it takes a deeper dive into the architectural and construction methodologies used to create—and, over the last few years, to rebuild—this landmark structure.
Three years ago, on April 15, 2019, Notre-Dame burned. The devastation of the 12th-century building was live-streamed around the world, with viewers witnessing the fiery ruination of one of the icons of Parisian culture in real time. Investigations that followed the extinguishing of the blaze revealed that undertaking a $12-million renovation of the cathedral’s 1860 wood-framed spire—an addition designed by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc and Jean-Baptiste Lassus—was the likely cause, probably originating in the heavy-timber structure supporting the roof.
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