The installation by a crane of a new golden rooster on Notre Dame, reimagined as a dramatic phoenix with licking, flamed feathers, goes beyond being just a weathervane atop the cathedral spire, reports The Guardian.
It symbolises resilience amid destruction after the devastating April 2019 fire – as restoration officials also revealed an anti-fire misting system is being kitted out under the cathedral’s roof.
Chief architect Philippe Villeneuve, who designed the new rooster, said that the original’s survival signified a ray of light in the catastrophe.
“That there was hope, that not everything was lost. The beauty of the [old] battered rooster … expressed the cry of the cathedral suffering in flames,” Villeneuve said. He described the new work of art, approximately half a metre long and gleaming in the December sun behind Notre Dame Cathedral, as his “phoenix”.
Villeneuve elaborated on the new rooster’s significance, saying: “Since [the fire] we have worked on this rooster [the] successor, which sees the flame carried to the top of the cathedral as it was before, more than 96 metres from the ground … It is a fire of resurrection.”
In lighthearted comments, the architect said that the process of design was so intense he might have to speak to his therapist about it.
Before ascending to its perch, the rooster – a French emblem of vigilance and Christ’s resurrection – was blessed by Paris Archbishop Laurent Ulrich in a square behind the monument. The rooster is an emotive national emblem for the French because of the word’s semantics; the Latin word gallus means both Gaul and rooster.