Fire Extinguished at Rouen Cathedral, a Frequent Subject of Monet’s Paintings

Firefighters have extinguished a blaze that broke out in a historic cathedral in Rouen, France. The fire caused no significant damage to the Gothic structure, which Claude Monet famously depicted in numerous paintings.

The blaze began around noon on July 11, when a plastic tarp covering part of the cathedral’s spire caught fire, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). After trying to contain the flames themselves, workers called in emergency services.

A team of about 70 firefighters quickly brought the blaze “under control,” says Stephane Gouezec, the local fire chief, per AFP. As a precaution, they also removed 28 artworks from inside the cathedral. The fire was completely extinguished by around 5 p.m.

“There doesn’t seem to be too much damage,” Caroline Dutarte, a Rouen official, tells the New York Times’ Amelia Nierenberg, Constant Méheut and Ségolène Le Stradic. “Above all, no one was injured.”

The mayor of Rouen, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that the cause of the fire is still unknown.

Dating to the 12th century, the historic cathedral was constructed in many stages over more than 700 years. It’s located near the site where Joan of Arc was martyred in the 15th century. Its spire stands at nearly 500 feet, and for a brief period—between 1876 and 1880—it was the tallest building in the world.

However, the church is perhaps best known for its association with Monet, who painted it more than 30 times in the early 1890s. “I work like a mad man,” the French Impressionist once wrote to his wife. “I cannot stop thinking of anything else but the cathedral.” Throughout the series, he captured the grand structure from various angles and at different times of day.

“He’s painting it over and over again in this focused way, trying to capture how these different conditions change its appearance,” Kathryn Calley Galitz, an art historian and educator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, tells the Times. “It’s not the fleeting moment. He went back year after year to paint it.”

In recent weeks, the cathedral’s spire had been surrounded by scaffolding and a white cover as part of ongoing renovations, reports the Guardian’s Lili Bayer. As part of this construction, workers had been adding firewalls inside the wooden structure to protect it from a catastrophe like the fire that devastated Paris’ Notre-Dame Cathedral in 2019. Five years later, workers are still repairing the Paris landmark.

This week wasn’t the first time that the Rouen cathedral was harmed. In 1822, lightning destroyed the spire—the highest in France—which was later rebuilt with cast iron. During World War II, Allied bombings caused additional damage, which wasn’t fully repaired until the 1980s.

Now, the world can rest easy knowing that the fire was extinguished before it caused any serious harm to the cathedral—a structure that, like Notre-Dame, “loom[s] large in the imagination of the French,” as Fred Kleiner, a retired art and architecture historian at Boston University, tells the Times.

Ella Feldman | READ MORE

Ella Malena Feldman is a writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. She examines art, culture and gender in her work, which has appeared in Washington City Paper, DCist and the Austin American-Statesman.