A real backbone
Delivery of Notre Dame’s roof truss on the River Seine. There’s a lot of building work in Paris these days, not just with a view to the Olympic Games due in the city in eleven months (see page 58 of ITJ 19-20/2023). The River Seine is also proving its worth for project cargo in the reconstruction of Notre Dame cathedral.
15 April 2019 was a black day for Notre-Dame de Paris, the Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité island in the River Seine, with smoke rising to the sky from the burning church, a world heritage site in the French capital. Now inland waterways are playing a strong role for the transport of building components needed to reopen the landmark in record time. The schedule foresees December 2024 for the momentous moment.
On 11 July elements of the roof truss were delivered to the construction site on the banks of the River Seine. The three trusses had been assembled at the port of the Paris suburb Ivry-sur-Seine and loaded onto a Lafarge Granulats barge there. Each truss measured 15 x 12 m and weighed almost 1 t.
After their arrival at the cathedral the wooden frameworks were hoisted to the top of the building in the presence of Clément Beaune, the assistant minister of transport, Thierry Guimbaud, the managing director of Voies Navigables de France (VNF), the national inland waterways authority, and Antoine Berbain, the deputy managing director of Haropa Port.
More than 200 t of material
It wasn’t the first time that the river passing through Paris proved to be a strong backbone for the logistics of this extraordinary project. In the more than four years that have passed since the fire, the Seine has been involved in the transport of particularly large parts to the construction site several times.
The first time saw the delivery of two transformers at the beginning of 2020. Since January of this year lime, sand, ashlars and now the oak scaffolding parts have been added to the list, so that a total of more than 200 t of material has already been delivered to the building site on the riverine waterway.