It's amazing how structures built ages ago have held together, but houses that were built just 30-40 years ago are collapsing. Think about sturdy structures like the historic castles in Europe, the pyramids, the Roman coliseum, the Greek Acropolis... When the Cathedral of Notre Dame suffered from a damaging fire in 2019, its structure remained intact. Now, architects learned why. That's today's blog (thanks to Livescience).
During its construction beginning in the 12th century, builders used iron staples to support Notre Dame's masonry.
LIVESCIENCE, March 16, 2023 Jennifer Nalewicki
In 2019, a fire broke out inside Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, severely damaging the iconic medieval building. However, the catastrophic fire gave researchers an opportunity to study the building's architecture like never before.
A few months after the inferno was extinguished, researchers discovered that the stones used to build the Gothic-style cathedral were held together using iron staples, a technique that had never been documented before in a building from this time period, according to a study published March 15 in the journal PLOS One.
Notre Dame was constructed in multiple phases starting in the early 12th century and continuing for the next 300 years, according to the Notre Dame Cathedral website.
"This is the first building of its kind in which we see this," lead author Maxime L'Héritier, a professor in the Department of History at Paris 8 University, told Live Science. "This shows [that the builders] at the time were trying to experiment with new forms of construction."
L'Héritier and his team analyzed 12 of the iron staples, which measure approximately 20 inches (50 centimeters) long and were part of the "iron skeleton" holding the building together, L'Héritier wrote in an essay for the archaeology publication Sapiens.
The staples offered additional reinforcements to the cathedral's stonework, including holding together the large arches in the nave of the building's towering 226-foot-tall (69 meters) twin towers. Without the staples' support, this architectural feat would likely have been impossible to accomplish in 1160, when construction of the building began, according to the study.
"When we studied other Gothic churches of that time period, none used iron in their construction," L'Héritier said. "We believe that the staples were what enabled them to build this structure at such a terrific height."
Researchers radiocarbon dated the iron staples and discovered that they were used during one of the initial construction phases, "confirming that the production date of the staples was the same as the masonry, which also dated to around 1160," L'Héritier said.
In the four years following the blaze, Notre Dame has been undergoing reconstruction and is expected to reopen to visitors in December 2024, according to AP News.
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