Notre-Dame Cathedral: The progress of restoration efforts

World
Europe

02:53

France says it has received over a billion dollars in pledges to restore the Notre Dame Cathedral after it was devastated by a fire last month. The government has promised to complete its restoration within five years. But, there are questions over whether that's possible, and how the restoration should be done. Elena Casas reports from Burgundy in France.

Leopold Bigaud is a journeyman apprentice - a member of a guild that's existed since the Middle Ages. He travels around France learning his craft - roofing.

LEOPOLD BIGAUD APPRENTICE ROOFER "Our guild dates back to the sixteenth century, so we're learning techniques and knowledge that have been handed down for centuries."

Here in rural Burgundy, Leopold is learning skills that are even older. The Guedelon castle is being reconstructed using the same techniques and materials available to workers 800 years ago.

ELENA CASAS BURGUNDY, FRANCE "Over 700 people work on this building site throughout the summer, two-thirds of them, apprentices who are learning traditional crafts to keep building skills perfected in the thirteenth century alive in the twenty-first."

This project was launched twenty years ago by a team of archaeologists, and it's enabled them to learn just how medieval masons worked.

ROBIN POSSON STONECUTTER "We gather evidence from archeological digs, but also from illuminated medieval manuscripts and the work of historians, so little by little we're filling in gaps in historians' knowledge, by doing it ourselves we find solutions to problems."

Medieval construction skills are now needed in France, since the government wants to reconstruct the Notre Dame Cathedral, a masterpiece of thirteenth-century architecture, in just five years.

FLORIAN RENUCCI MASTER MASON DIRECTOR OF GUEDELON SITE "We've got knowledge and techniques here that are now very little known, so the reconstruction of Notre Dame could be an opportunity to give thousands of young people a vocation, to encourage them to train in renovation and construction, as long as the choice is made to use traditional craftsmen who work in wood and stone."

There are fears five years is an unrealistic deadline, but experts here say that using skilled craftspeople, it can be done. The government has yet to announce how it will be rebuilt or by whom, but these apprentices say helping to restore France's medieval icon would be their dream. Elena Casas, CGTN, Burgundy, France.