On 15 April 2019, at 18:18 CEST, a structural fire broke out in the roof space of Notre-Dame de Paris, a medieval Catholic cathedral in Paris, France, part of the "Paris, Banks of the Seine" UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The fire, which investigators believe was started by a cigarette or an electrical short circuit, destroyed the cathedral's wooden spire (flèche) and most of the wooden roof and severely damaged the cathedral's upper walls. The vaulted stone ceiling largely contained the burning roof as it collapsed, preventing extensive damage to the interior. Many works of art and religious relics were moved to safety, but others suffered smoke damage, and some of the exterior art was damaged or destroyed. The cathedral's altar, two pipe organs, and three 13th-century rose windows suffered little or no damage. Three emergency workers were injured. The fire contaminated the site and nearby areas of Paris with toxic dust and lead.
The cathedral was then closed immediately. Two days after the blaze, President of France Emmanuel Macron set a five-year deadline to restore it. Notre-Dame did not hold a Christmas Mass in 2019 for the first time since 1803. By September 2021, donors had contributed over €840 million to the rebuilding effort. After three years of reconstruction, the cathedral reopened on 7 December 2024, and follow-up restoration work on the cathedral's surroundings and interior fittings continued into 2026.
Background
The construction of the Catholic cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris ("Our Lady of Paris") began in the 12th century. Its walls and interior vaulted ceiling are of stone. Its roof and flèche (spire) were of wood—much of it 13th-century oak—sheathed in lead to exclude water. The spire was rebuilt several times, including in the 19th century.
The cathedral's stonework had been severely eroded by years of weather and pollution, and the spire had extensively rotted because fissures in its lead sheathing were admitting water. The roof timbers were dry, spongy and powdery with age. In 2014, the Ministry of Culture estimated needed renovations at €150 million, and in 2016 the Archdiocese of Paris launched an appeal to raise €100 million over the following five to ten years. At the time of the fire, the spire was undergoing restoration and scaffolding was being erected over the transept.
Extensive attention had been given to the risk of fire at the cathedral. The Paris Fire Brigade drilled regularly to prepare for emergencies there, including on-site exercises in 2018; a firefighter was posted to the cathedral each day; and fire wardens checked conditions beneath the roof three times daily.
Structural elements relevant to the fire
Fire
Fire broke out in the attic beneath the cathedral's roof at 18:18 CEST. At 18:20, the fire alarm sounded and guards evacuated the cathedral; a guard was sent to investigate, but to the wrong location—the attic of the adjoining sacristy—where he found no fire. About fifteen minutes later, the error was discovered, but by the time guards had climbed the three hundred steps to the cathedral attic, the fire was well advanced. The alarm system was not designed to automatically notify the fire brigade, which was summoned at 18:51 after the guards had returned. Firefighters arrived within ten minutes.
Police evacuated the Île de la Cité, the island in the river Seine where the cathedral is located. White smoke was seen rising from the roof, which turned black before flames appeared from the spire, then turned yellow.
Firefighting
More than 400 firefighters were engaged; another hundred government workers moved precious objects to safety via a human chain also including police and municipal workers.
The fire was primarily fought from inside the structure, which was more dangerous for personnel but reduced potential damage to the cathedral; applying water from outside risked deflecting flames and hot gases (at temperatures up to 800 °C or 1500 °F) inwards. Deluge guns were used at lower-than-usual pressures to minimise damage to the cathedral and its contents, with water that was supplied by pump-boat from the Seine.
Aerial firefighting was not used because water dropped from heights could have caused structural damage, and heated stone can crack if suddenly cooled. Helicopters were not used because of dangerous updrafts, but drones were used for visual and thermal imaging, and robots were used for visual imaging and directing water streams. Molten lead falling from the roof posed a special hazard for firefighters.
By 18:52, smoke was visible from outside; flames appeared in the next ten minutes, as firefighters arrived. The spire of the cathedral collapsed at 19:50, creating a draft that slammed all the doors and sent a fireball through the attic. Firefighters then retreated from within the attic and concentrated on fighting the fire from the ground.
Shortly before the spire fell, the fire had spread to the wooden framework inside the north tower, which supported eight very large bells. Had the bells fallen, it was thought that the damage done as they fell could have collapsed the north tower and then the south tower, and with them the entire cathedral. At 20:30, firefighters abandoned attempts to extinguish the roof and concentrated on saving the towers. Despite the risk of being caught in a collapse, a firefighter squad volunteered to attempt to put out the fire in the north tower, fighting from within and between the towers. Fourth Arrondissement Mayor Ariel Weil stated: "At that point, it was clear that some firefighters were going to go into the cathedral without knowing if they would come back out." By 21:45, the fire was under control.
Adjacent apartment buildings were evacuated owing to concern about possible collapse, but on 19 April the fire brigade ruled out that risk. One firefighter and two police officers were injured.
Damage
Most of the wood/metal roof and the spire of the cathedral was destroyed, with about one third of the roof remaining. The remnants of the roof and spire fell atop the stone vault underneath, which forms the ceiling of the cathedral's interior. Some sections of this vaulting collapsed in turn, allowing debris from the burning roof to fall to the marble floor below, but most sections remained intact owing to the use of rib vaulting, greatly reducing damage to the cathedral's interior and objects within.
The cathedral contained a large number of artworks, religious relics, and other irreplaceable treasures, including a crown of thorns said to be the one Jesus wore at his crucifixion, a purported piece of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, the Tunic of Saint Louis, a much-rebuilt pipe organ by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, and the 14th-century Virgin of Paris statue.
Some artwork had been removed in preparation for the renovations, and most of the cathedral's sacred relics were held in the adjoining sacristy, which the fire did not reach; all the cathedral's relics survived. For the cathedral's reopening, a new reliquary for the crown of thorns was unveiled, designed by Sylvain Dubuisson and installed in the axial chapel at the cathedral's eastern end; the relic is displayed within a blue half-sphere encircled by glass cross motifs and is otherwise kept locked inside the reliquary's marble base, being brought out only for major liturgical occasions such as Advent, Easter, and Christmas. Some contents were moved by a human chain of emergency workers and civil servants. Many valuables that were not removed also survived, but the state of many others remained unknown in the days immediately following the fire.
Lead joints in some of the 19th-century stained-glass windows melted, but the three major rose windows, dating to the 13th century, were undamaged. Several pews were destroyed, and the vaulted arches were blackened by smoke, though the church's main cross and altar survived, along with the statues surrounding it.
Some paintings, apparently only smoke-damaged, were transported to the Louvre for restoration and later returned to the cathedral ahead of its reopening. A number of statues, including those of the twelve Apostles and four Evangelists at the base of the spire, had been removed in preparation for renovations days before the fire; they were kept at the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine during the restoration and returned to the spire in April 2025. The rooster-shaped reliquary atop the spire was found damaged but intact among the debris. The three pipe organs were not significantly damaged; the great organ was nonetheless dismantled, cleaned of lead dust, and reassembled and tuned by 2024 in time for the reopening. The largest of the cathedral's bells, the bourdon, was not damaged. The liturgical treasury of the cathedral and the large-format "May" paintings were moved to safety.
Environmental damage
Airparif, an air quality monitoring organization, said winds rapidly dispersed the smoke, carrying it away aloft along the Seine corridor. The organization did not find elevated levels of particulate air pollution at monitoring stations nearby. The Paris police stated that there was no danger from breathing the air around the fire.
The burned-down roof had been covered with over 400 metric tonnes of lead. Settling dust substantially raised surface lead levels in some places nearby, notably the cordoned-off area and places left open during the fire. Wet cleaning for surfaces and blood tests for children and pregnant women were recommended in the immediate area. People working on the cathedral after the fire did not initially take the required lead precautions; materials leaving the site were decontaminated, but some clothing was not, and some precautions were not correctly followed; as a result, the worksite failed some inspections and was temporarily shut down. There was also more widespread contamination; testing, cleanup, and public health advisories were delayed for months, and the neighbourhood was not decontaminated for four months, prompting widespread criticism.
Average lead levels in Paris streets are normally five times the indoor legal limit (1,000 micrograms per square metre; 0.0014 gr/sq ft) owing to historic uses of lead, principally from runoff from intact roofs. The Health Ministry rules that children should not be exposed to more than 70 micrograms/m2 indoors. There is no legal limit for outdoor lead levels, which are often very heterogeneous; the Regional Health Agency of Ile-de-France was not certain if some of the elevated levels being measured were connected to the fire. This lack of clarity and threshold-linked mandatory measures may have delayed action. In mid-July, regional health officials raised their outdoor guideline from 1,000 micrograms/m2 to 5,000. Rain can redistribute the lead dust. Samples of honey collected in July 2019 revealed higher lead concentrations downwind from Notre-Dame and lead isotopes tagged the lead as originating from the fire and not other potential sources of pollutants.
Reactions
French president Emmanuel Macron, postponing a speech to address the yellow vests movement planned for that evening, went to Notre-Dame and gave a brief address there. Major religious leaders and representatives of numerous countries and international organisations extended condolences.
Through the night of the fire and into the next day, people gathered along the Seine to hold vigils, sing and pray. Some commentators found deeper meaning in the fire, linking it with divine judgment or the decline of Western civilisation.
The following Sunday at Saint-Eustache Church, the Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, honoured the firefighters with the presentation of a book of scriptures saved from the fire.
Investigation
On 16 April, the Paris prosecutor said that there was no evidence of a deliberate act, but the cause of the fire had not been proven yet.
The fire has been compared to the similar 1992 Windsor Castle fire and the Uppark fire, among others, and has raised old questions about the safety of similar structures and the techniques used to restore them.
Renovation presents a fire risk from sparks, short circuits, and heat from welding (roof repairs involved cutting and soldering lead sheets resting on timber). Normally, no electrical material is allowed in the roof space because of the extreme fire risk. The roof framing was made of very dry timber, often powdery with age. After the fire, the architect responsible for fire safety at the cathedral acknowledged that the rate at which fire might spread had been underestimated, and experts said that it was well known that a fire in the roof would be almost impossible to control.
Of the firms working on the restoration, a Europe Echafaudage team was the only one working there on the day of the fire. The company claimed that no soldering or welding had occurred in the period just before the fire. The scaffolding was receiving electrical supply for temporary elevators and lighting. The roofing company, Le Bras Frères, claimed that it had followed procedure and that none of its personnel were on site when the fire began. Time-lapse images taken by a camera installed by the roofing company showed smoke first rising from the base of the spire.