Notre Dame fire: What happened and what next?

The Notre Dame Cathedral caught fire on Monday and continues to make international headlines one week on.

So what now?

This week’s podcast guest is Philippe Hertzberg. He runs a tour company called Secret Journeys and he works very closely with the cathedral. In fact, he was there when it caught fire.

Philippe talks about the tragedy, the history of the cathedral, and its future – explaining how renovation, restoration, and rebirth have long been themes of this iconic Parisian landmark.

Listen by pressing play below, or go and subscribe wherever you find your podcasts.

Find out more about Secret Journeys here (they do tours of a lot more than just Notre Dame and will launch their Versailles experience soon).

I highly recommend you check out this short video too, it’s from my recent trip inside the cathedral as part of a Secret Journeys walk.

Also, while we’re talking about YouTube, here’s my video from a walk around the cathedral a few months before it burned. At the start of the video, and in the thumbnail below, you’ll see Philippe from today’s podcast episode. The rest of the video is with Quentin the historian, who we talk about a lot in the episode too.

Lastly, I did a Facebook live video when the cathedral was burning. Here’s a very touching clip from that stream, where Parisians broke out in song as the blaze continued across the river.

If you want to find more about The Earful Tower, here’s the website, here’s the Patreon link, and here’s my Instagram. 

If you want to learn French with Camille’s method, find the French Today audiobooks here.