Archaeological digs in the fire-damaged Notre Dame cathedral in Paris have found a lead coffin from the Middle Ages, fragments of statues and even part of the cathedral’s rood screen taken down in the Counter Reformation.
There may be other treasures hidden beneath the cathedral floor, but archaeologists were only allowed to excavate an area beneath the transept where a platform and scaffolding have since been put up to raise the weighty replacement spire on to the new roof.
The original lead-covered spire dramatically crashed to the floor during the fire of April 2019, bringing a large part of the old roof with it.
The closed coffin, examined by a tiny camera, contains the remains of a local dignitary, possibly a senior church official from the 1300s, France’s archaeological institute INRAP said.
Diggers also found sculpted hands, feet and faces, some still painted, including a full head that might represent Jesus.
Many parts of the rood screen are buried widely under the floor, but digging permission only applied to the specified area from February to April.
Photos from a visit by President Emmanuel Macron on Good Friday showed stretches of cleaned light stone along the walls, indicating the once-dark cathedral will be brighter inside when it reopens in 2024.
The cathedral’s interior is also a jungle of scaffolding to enable workers to repair and clean the walls. That includes replacing damaged stones with new limestone blocks from a quarry 85km northeast of the capital. Scaffolding is slowly going up on the outside of Notre Dame as well, to enable workers to rebuild the cross-shaped roof and place the Gothic-style spire on top of it. A large network of steel poles will rise around the building next year.
General Jean-Louis Georgelin, head of the tightly-scheduled project, said the hardest job would be rebuilding the spire and the interior vaults that prop it up. Engineers praise medieval architects for the precise construction of their vaults.
It would be finished as promised in 2024, when Paris hosts the Summer Olympic Games, General Georgelin said.
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