Inside the Dramatic Race to Restore Notre Dame Cathedral

About a year before Notre Dame was set to reopen after a devastating fire, the French general tasked with overseeing the cathedral’s reconstruction, Jean-Louis Georgelin, disappeared.

Georgelin, a strapping 74-year-old who had once served as President Jacques Chirac’s military chief of staff, was taking a break in the summer to trek through the Pyrénées. He was known to hike alone and regularly climbed the Pyrénées’ highest peaks. When he didn’t return to his mountain refuge one August evening, the caretaker called the police to tell them the hiker hadn’t returned. A helicopter was quickly dispatched, and hours later the police found Georgelin’s body on the slopes of Mont Valier, a 9,311-foot mountain near the Spanish border.

The tragedy hit France hard. Georgelin was in the homestretch of one of the most complicated reconstruction projects that France had ever undertaken on a historical monument, and his death put even more pressure on French President Emmanuel Macron, who had staked much of his legacy on rapidly restoring a cathedral that for centuries has symbolized the country’s civic and religious life.

Macron had to quickly replace his hard-charging general with a leader who could get the project over the finish line, and his choice could not have been more different: Philippe Jost, a lanky engineer who had spent much of his career in the cogs of the country’s defense ministry making sure France’s army was well-equipped.

The ministry was where Jost had met the general, and the technician’s obsessive attention to detail had made him a natural right hand to Georgelin’s campaign to save the cathedral. Jost, a lifelong behind-the-scenes guy, worked well with Georgelin but didn’t seek the spotlight or play politics, according to people who knew both men well. But he and Georgelin both liked to hike mountains, and were devoted Catholics. Jost, without the general, knew his job had just gotten exponentially harder. “We didn’t know whether we would be able to continue at the same pace, and what uncertainties it would create,” he says.

The race to reopen the cathedral didn’t stop; in fact, it had been ticking since the moment the fire started in the early evening of April 15, 2019. Hours after the fire was extinguished, Macron went on TV and pledged to rebuild the cathedral within five years and to make it more beautiful than before—a pledge disseminated by nearly every major media outlet around the world.

For Macron, the fire marked a chance for him to revel in his role as a statesman who would rally the masses to support the renewal of the beloved icon. While the people of France supported the effort in the immediate aftermath—within days of the fire, there were donations of more than $900 million—the years that followed were beset by pushback, controversy and outrage: first, over Macron’s plan to reopen on a rapid timeline (some experts said it would take at least 15 to 20 years), then over the more than half-billion dollars in donations from France’s wealthiest families (the restoration came as the yellow-vest protests were tearing France apart), and finally over his plans to redesign the Gothic spire, and later recommission stained glass windows ( Quel culot! ).

While the cathedral wasn’t ready for the Olympic Games in Paris this summer as authorities had initially hoped, its scheduled reopening for religious services this December offers a stunning cap to a year when Paris has been center stage. It will also serve as a quieter reckoning for Jost, who has stepped into the shoes of a general and been compelled to parry the whims of his president while also keeping track of around 250 companies that have participated in the Notre Dame project. One day, he’s overseeing workers cleaning up the cathedral’s interiors and reinstalling cherished relics; other days, he’s watching teams use cranes to suspend architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s famously ornate spire. He also has to manage the forest of wooden latticework required to reconstruct what had been a medieval roof. Soon crowds will return to peer at it all. Before the fire, the cathedral got around 12 million visitors a year, far more than the Vatican.

Jost knows everyone who steps inside the cathedral will decide whether he pulled off the herculean task foisted upon him. Heading into the final weeks before it’s set to reopen, he’s exuding confidence, though it’s anyone’s guess how the body politic will react. Putting it mildly, he says, “There’s a lot of passion around Notre-Dame de Paris.”

WHEN THE Notre Dame fire erupted that spring evening in 2019, France itself was burning.

The same day as the fire, Macron was set to address the violence that had engulfed the country through its yellow-vest protests, which began over fuel taxes and morphed into nationwide riots against Macron, whom they called “the president of the rich.” In Paris, some protesters burned cars, looted stores and even vandalized the Arc de Triomphe.

Authorities have said the fire was started by an electrical issue or a cigarette; investigators still don’t know. As it spread, the banks of the surrounding Seine became thronged with horrified onlookers holding their cellphones aloft. The rest of the world watched the televised destruction into the early morning hours.

Located on the Île de la Cité, a small island in the middle of Paris, Notre Dame was first constructed between 1163 and 1345, and its elaborate Gothic design was intended to reflect the economically flush city. From its rain-funneling gargoyles to its vividly colored rose-shape windows, the cathedral, whose name means “Our Lady,” paid homage to Christ’s mother while doubling as an emblem of medieval starchitecture, historians say.

Among many historic events that took place at the cathedral, Henry VI of England was crowned king of France there in 1431, and Napoleon was officially named emperor there in 1804. In 1831, French writer Victor Hugo invited his readers to step into the cathedral and look up, hailing its “majestic and sublime” architecture. “Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries,” he wrote.

By sunrise the morning after the fire, much of Notre Dame appeared to be in ruins. Tales of heroism started to emerge, including that of the fire brigade’s chaplain, Father Jean-Marc Fournier, who had entered the building as it burned and, with the help of firefighters, rescued some of the cathedral’s relics. This included the crown of thorns said to have been worn by Jesus during his crucifixion.

The disaster portended a chance for France to unify. “I deeply believe that it’s up to us to turn this catastrophe into an opportunity to become better than we are, together,” Macron said at the time.

Donations poured in—340,000 people contributed across the world, including Americans, who gave around $40 million. But most of the $900 million derived from France’s wealthiest families. In what appeared to be a game of altruistic one-upmanship, billionaires announced their contributions in quick succession. First, Kering’s François-Henri Pinault, who, shortly after the fire, said his family would give $113 million. Hours later, LVMH and the family of its CEO, Bernard Arnault, pledged $226 million. Then L’Oréal and the Bettencourt Meyers family—its biggest shareholder—donated another $226 million, in part through their foundation.

The yellow-vested protesters didn’t applaud the philanthropic gesture; instead, they returned to the streets days later to decry what they saw as a slap in the face of France’s languishing working classes. They waved banners that read, “We Are All Cathedrals” and “Notre Dame, But Not Us.” The cathedral had become an unlikely political lightning rod in the country’s class war.

“This is a false controversy,” Arnault hit back when speaking to shareholders days later. “It’s quite concerning to see that in France you are criticized even when you do something that is clearly in the public interest.”

TUCKED AWAY inside the Élysée presidential palace, Georgelin just needed to amass his troops. After he was appointed, Jost sent him a text message of congratulations, and a few days later, he hired Jost to help.

Together, the men set out to organize the donations and budgets; they submitted and then fielded bids from conservators, artisan restorers and hundreds of crews seeking to handle everything from the cathedral’s cleanup to stabilization efforts. Macron also started tossing the men, and France, his own ideas.

Within days of the fire, Macron announced that he would launch an international architectural competition for the reconstruction of that famous spire. The 315-foot spire designed by Viollet-le-Duc was created around the same time as the Eiffel Tower. Macron’s move suggested that adding a new spire designed today could add a modern-day touch to this evolving piece of historic architecture.

Parisians have reams of rules about historic preservation, and the chief architect overseeing France’s historic monuments, Philippe Villeneuve, told French radio that he would resign rather than allow a contemporary spire.

Georgelin was incensed. “As for the chief architect, I have already explained that he should shut up,” the general told the National Assembly a month later to gasps. It didn’t matter. Macron’s plan for a new spire was ultimately shot down by the country’s National Heritage and Architecture Commission.

The spire controversy was just a sideshow to the bigger problem: The roof, which acted as the linchpin of its medieval design, had been nearly destroyed, and threatened to bring the whole cathedral down with it. The roof pushed downward and outward on Notre Dame’s limestone walls, countering the inward pressure generated by the cathedral’s flying buttresses and massive facade. Without the roof in place, the limestone walls of Notre Dame’s nave risked tilting inward, and its vaulted ceiling was close to buckling. To top it off, water used to douse the flames created fissures in the massive stones that arc above Notre Dame’s nave, and seeped into the joints and mortar, leading to crumbling.

Before the fire, workers doing other repairs had erected scaffolding inside the church, and now this 350-ton metal structure stood, charred, twisted and shaky. “It was a kind of monster,” says Xavier Rodriguez, CEO of Groupe Jarnias, which intervened to reach inaccessible places. “If the scaffolding had collapsed, the cathedral would have collapsed too.”

The team under Georgelin saw it as another threat to the building’s stability and built a massive additional exoskeleton of scaffolding around it so workers known as “squirrels” could rappel down and remove it piece by piece. They were just days away from starting to dismantle the scaffolding when the country went into a Covid-19 lockdown. For a month and a half, work came to a halt, Jost says, with a small team keeping guard to make sure the scaffolding, which was equipped with sensors, didn’t topple.

It took six months for the squirrels to remove the charred scaffolding after they were allowed to resume their work. “I remember holding my breath every time my team went in,” says Rodriguez, a former squirrel himself. “Once the scaffolding had been removed, we knew the cathedral was saved.”

EVERYTHING UPENDED ANEW after Georgelin’s death. Jost was himself trekking in the Alps in southeastern France when he got the terrible news. “I was high up in the mountains and I didn’t have a signal,” he says. When he made his way down to the valley, “I must have had 40 messages on my phone.”

Jost, shocked, spoke a few heartfelt words during Georgelin’s packed funeral. A week later, Macron tapped him to oversee the rest of the restoration.

On December 8, 2023, Macron visited the cathedral to check on Notre Dame’s progress. He climbed onto the roof to examine the new spire and engraved Georgelin’s name on one of its uprights. He also announced another competition: selecting an artist to create six new modern stained glass windows to replace a few also designed by Viollet-le-Duc. To Macron, changing them offered a chance to memorialize a profound moment in Parisian history. The existing windows aren’t original to the structure, and the deeply saturated and colorful windows aren’t festooned with saintly scenes; they are more plainly decorated.

To preservationists, it would be a desecration. “These stained glass windows were spared by the fire, and the fire’s destructive work would be continued by removing them,” says Julien Lacaze, head of an association defending France’s heritage, who launched a petition to block Macron’s plans.

When the cathedral reopens, it will be used mainly during religious services—and thorny issues like the stained glass controversy will likely remain unresolved. There is still money in Georgelin’s original budget, and Jost says he is committed to repairing a few areas like the back of the cathedral, which needed restoration even before the fire.

Jost says he is proud of his team’s work, especially under the circumstances. And while it’s anyone’s guess how the rest of the world will react once it’s open, his own mind is made up. “Every time I step into Notre-Dame, it’s a moment of grace and beauty,” he says. “We had forgotten how beautiful the cathedral is.”

Write to Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com and Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com