In April 2019, Agnès Poirier watched a fire almost destroy the Paris cathedral. For the past five years, she has had unique access to the army of artisans tasked with rebuilding the 12th-century ‘soul of France’
The yellow-brown plumes of smoke coiling upwards filled my entire kitchen window. A few moments earlier the sky had been bright blue. I rushed down the stairs on to Quai de la Tournelle. Everything was still and eerily silent: passersby looked stunned, rooted to the ground; cars had stopped in the middle of the road, the passengers immobile, all looking across the Seine. I followed their gaze. Notre Dame was burning. Huge red and orange tongues of fire were leaping from its roof; we could hear its 12th-century wood cracking loudly. I will always remember that sound: the sound of history wailing.
As the cathedral burned, the president, Emmanuel Macron, the leaders of the Senate and the National Assembly, the whole government, rushed to Notre Dame’s side. At 9.30pm, Macron authorised the daredevil attempt by 150 firefighters to save the cathedral by attacking the fire from inside the north belfry. Never was the Paris firefighters’ motto, Sauver ou Périr (To Save or To Die), truer than on the night of 15 April 2019. As Jean-Claude Gallet, a three-star general and commander of the Paris fire brigade, told me: “The situation was so grave, audacity was the only option.”
