More news for Notre-Dame de Paris, less than three weeks after its reopening. Accessible to the public again since the weekend of December 7 and 8, five and a half years after the fire which ravaged it, the Gothic building erected 850 years ago is now completely classified as a Monument. historical. All that was missing was the presbytery. It is now done.
This request for classification of the cathedral presbytery, an initiative of the Minister of Culture Rachida Dadi, was the subject of “a favorable opinion from the National Commission for Heritage and Architecture, at its meeting of September 14, 2024 », Indicates the ministry on December 27, in a press release.
During the restoration of the jewel of the Île de la Cité (4th century) – the work carried out by Jean-Baptiste Lassus, then Eugène Viollet-le-Duc lasted around twenty years, from 1843 to 1864 – the construction of the sacristy in 1845, then that, in 1866, “at the foot of the cathedral, on land belonging to the City of Paris”, of the “house of guardian”, which became the current presbytery, recalls the ministry.
Thus, “the construction of this building (also in a neo-Gothic style specific to the architect) organically linked to Notre-Dame Cathedral and its sacristy, came to conclude the restoration program that it (Eugène Viollet-le-Duc) had masterfully carried out for more than twenty years and which the public is rediscovering today in all its splendor.
In addition, “the Notre-Dame Cathedral and its sacristy having been classified as historic monuments on the 1862 list, four years before the construction of the presbytery, the latter, property of the State, did not until then benefit from “no protection of its own, outside of the surrounding area,” it is specified in the press release. From now on, it is the Parisian cathedral complex which, classified in its entirety, will be able to benefit from “coherent conservation”.
