Kind: captions
Language: en
inside Notre Dame the first chance to
get up close to the gigantic South Rose
window in 160 years
has revealed a mystery we only have 13th
Century Glass and 19th century laws
in the 19th century they removed
everything that wasn't 13th century and
then they had to do new panels if a
panel was missing
the chief suspect for these radical
changes to the window is architect ergen
Violet Leduc
in the 1840s he was tasked with
breathing new life into Notre Dame at
the time it was not the Beloved building
we know today
the cathedral was ransacked during the
French Revolution
statues of biblical Kings on the facade
were decapitated
and it was used as a warehouse sitting
derelict and unloved for decades
during his restoration the Duke removed
all glass in the South Rose window that
was not original
and replaced it with Modern Glass
Elizabeth is also finding that he made
significant alterations to some of the
original glass panels why did Leduc
alter the window
the glass experts hunt for Clues here at
the Paris Media Tech of architecture and
Heritage
they hope leduc's plans for the South
Rose window shed light on his thinking
as they dig into the archives they make
a breakthrough
you just discovered that there was
that of structure
before of your little Duke there was an
iron reinforcement in the center of the
Rose but obviously it wasn't enough so
if you later Duke put it further away
from the center and when you removed the
iron work here I had to change the form
of the panels
leduc's restoration was sweeping he
removed a smaller structural ring of
iron and replaced it with a bigger ring
to strengthen the core of the window
he removed all traces of previous
Restorations to replace them with panels
of new glass
and he rotated the whole window 15
degrees
to make it structurally stronger
[Music]
from a Mr
wasn't stable in his access
that must have been the problem leduc's
major changes to the South Rose were
motivated by more than mere Aesthetics
strengthening the window has helped
preserve this masterpiece