Amazing Finds Under the Burnt-Out Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris

The terrible fire at Notre Dame on April 15, 2019, has led to some valuable discoveries. As part of a major restoration effort, some fifty archaeologists from the company Inrap have been excavating beneath and around the cathedral for five years. At a press conference on Tuesday, September 17, the researchers revealed their impressive findings, which reveal 2,000 years of history.

The remains of several buildings were discovered, including the floors of a large ancient residence dating back to the 1st century, more than a thousand years before Notre Dame was built, when Paris was still called Lutetia. They were found at a depth of 3.5 meters, under the Soufflot cellar, located in the very center of the building. Traces of a medieval building and a Carolingian building 30 meters long (on the southern side of the cathedral) were also found.

But the most spectacular discovery was the discovery of a 13th-century boat-shaped screen (a sculpted wall separating the choir from the nave in a church) buried beneath the transept. It was unearthed in preparation for the installation of 700-ton scaffolding to restore Viollet-le-Duc’s spire.

Archaeologists have uncovered more than 1,000 fragments of sculpture from this wall, 700 of which are polychrome – “exceptional” works, according to several experts, offering a rare glimpse of the vibrant colours that adorned Notre-Dame in the Middle Ages. The fragments will be reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle in a digital reconstruction that will begin in 2026. In the meantime, some thirty of the recovered fragments will be exhibited at the Cluny Museum as part of the exhibition “Making Stones Speak. Sculptures from Notre-Dame” (from 19 November 2024 to 16 March 2025).

In the basement of the cathedral, researchers may have found the remains of the poet Joachim Du Bellay, who died in 1560. Among hundreds of burials, a lead coffin (a sign of an important person) caught their attention for several reasons, as detailed by Eric Crubesi, a physician and professor of biological anthropology at the Paul-Sabatier University in Toulouse.

Firstly, the skeleton shows traces of the rare disease from which the poet died: tuberculosis of the cervical bones, which caused chronic meningitis, which at that time occurred in only 0.03% of cases. Secondly, the remains show traces of intensive horseback riding, and the poet was indeed an experienced and very active rider. Finally, the document confirms that Joachim du Bellay (who was also a canon of Notre Dame and nephew of Jean du Bellay, the former bishop of Paris) was indeed buried in the cathedral.