Tuesday 4 June 2019

The Covers are Off!



Durham Cathedral

The Tower covers are finally off, the scaffolding is down after 3 years & the main tower is open again! 

This is what it looked like with the covers on and often a lot of stuff in front of it.



It's sad that most of the time these lovely buildings have to have so much work going on which maskstheir beauty but it's the price of keeping them alive for future generations. Here's the BBC article about the work.

St Mark's Basilica was covered for ages, I stopped taking photos of it when I was doing the Great Rail Journeys tours. I can't imaging what Notre Dame will look like as it is being renovated. Think it will take more than the 5 years they forecast but I'm sure they will do it even if it doesn't look like the original. It's hard to get the specialist people to produce the craft work necessary. Durham have their own team & train apprentices as I suppose all cathedrals do but the amount of work needed to renovate Notre Dame is colossal.

Now there's lots of work going on inside Durham cathedral providing new entrances to improve access and to show more of the architectural features of the doorways which have been hidden. Hopefully it will be finished by Christmas.

Today there were visitors from many countries including France, Canada, Australia & the USA. Hope they enjoyed their visit even though they are not seeing the cathedral at its best.

6 comments:

  1. It's always a good moment when the scaffolding comes down from any building. I can't wait to see Big Ben. I bet the Notre Dame will take longer than 5 years, unless French workers work harder than British ones! Lol.

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    1. Yes that will be great. Not until 2021 though sadly you miss it even though I'm not a visitor to London often it's very symbolic especially the chimes.

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  2. wow that will take such a long time for Notre Dame to get "healed"...

    Glad you posted. I actually came by yesterday to see if there was anything new.

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    1. Thanks for dropping in Sandy. I've been on holiday for a couple of weeks, Disneyworld of all places, so haven't been posting. Hoping to get back to it soon.

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  3. I can think of many monuments and byzantine era churches here in Greece being hidden behind scaffolding and thus preventing people from experiencing their architectural and artistic beauty .The most important thing is for the works to be completed as soon as possible and with a good outcome.Thank you for sharing. Have a good weekend .Tina

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  4. Yes it's important to keep them alive for the future generations to enjoy.
    Hope you are enjoying the summer.

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