The 860 year’s old building is the first known cathedral of Gothic-style architecture that used iron to bind the stones together when it was initially constructed, a huge technological advancement for the time.
When it was built in the middle of the 12th century, Notre Dame was the tallest building ever built, towering about 104 feet over Paris.suggested that it was able to soar to these heights by combining a number of architectural innovations such as ribbed crossing and thin vaults, but the role that iron played in the cathedral’s initial construction was unclear.
The restoration of the cathedral after the 2019 fire allowed a team to study previously hidden parts of Notre Dame, where theyfrom 12 iron staples that were used to bind stone together. The staples were in different parts of the building, including the nave aisles, upper walls, and tribunes. The team studied the samples using radiocarbon dating to estimate how old they were. Microscopic, chemical, and architectural analyses suggest that the iron staples were used during the earliest phases of the cathedral’s construction in the 1160s. This makes it the first building of its type to rely on these iron staples throughout its structure.
Reinforcement of the building’s stones with iron was key to creating the cathedral’s Gothic style, the authors add.
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