Saturday, July 18, 2020

Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul de Nantes

Construction on the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul de Nantes was begun in 1434; it was completed in 1891. It was somewhat damaged by bombing in 1944, but nearly burned down in a fire in 1972; it survived, but its interior needed a considerable amount of reworking. This morning it caught fire again. The church organ is irreparably damaged, but the fire was caught soon enough that the church is not anywhere near as damaged as Notre Dame had been. (It probably also helped that after the 1972 fire, the wooden roof was completely replaced with a mostly concrete structure.) The fire is still being investigated, but as the evidence currently indicates that it had three distinct points of origin, it's almost certain to be a case of arson.