CityLab Daily: Hope For Restoration at the Notre-Dame

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Restoring hope: The extent of the fire damage at the Notre-Dame Cathedral is still uncertain, but the good news is that the structure has survived. That’s because Gothic architecture is strong stuff—the stone structure of the 13th century cathedral proved fundamentally fireproof. “It’s not that they’re designed to be burned down, but it’s designed so that if the roof burns off, it’s hard for [the fire] to spread to the rest of the building,” a scholar of medieval architecture tells CityLab.