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Restoring Notre-Dame’s ‘magical’ windows

Conservation scientist Claudine Loisel is spellbound by the stained-glass splendours that survived a devastating fire at Paris’s famous cathedral.
  1. Chris Woolston

    1. Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.

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Claudine Loisel, wearing full body covering and gloves, peers closely at a back-lit stained-glass window on a table in a lab

Claudine Loisel is a glass specialist at the Historical Monuments Research Laboratory in Champs-Sur-Marne, France. Credit: Francois Mori/AP/Shutterstock

Stained glass is a magical material, whether in a church or a laboratory. Here, I’m examining a panel taken from a French national treasure — Notre‑Dame cathedral in Paris — after it was nearly destroyed by fire on 15 April 2019. I’m leaning over a light table at the Historical Monuments Research Laboratory, my workspace west of the city. The lab closed because of the COVID-19 outbreak, but reopened on 3 June.

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Nature 583, 160 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01919-z

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