Eight oaks from the Bercé forest blessed for the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris

In France, 200-year-old oaks that are to be felled for the reconstruction of the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris have been blessed. For the restoration of the 96-metre spire, enormous oaks have been chosen, fifty metres tall, with trunks more than a metre in diameter, from the Bercé National Forest on the banks of the Loire. The ancient forest of Bercé is famous precisely for its oaks, which have grown here for millennia and which, in the time of Louis XIV, came to be cultivated deliberately under the supervision of his minister Colbert: trees were prepared here for the navy. The oaks were raised in a particular way, planted around with beeches so that they would grow taller, reaching for the sun. Until the beginning of this century, marine timber was still harvested in this forest, so that the eight oaks chosen for Notre-Dame might just as well have become parts of a ship.

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Eight oaks from the Bercé forest blessed for the spire of Notre-Dame de Paris

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

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