![]() One of the most extraordinary pieces was an intact sculpture of the head of a man, believed to be a representation of Jesus, carved from stone. The rest of the Notre Dame rood appears to have been carefully interred under the cathedral floor during the building’s restoration by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc – who added the spire – in the mid-19th century. In Catholic churches, most were removed during the Counter-Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries. Some of these are in the cathedral store rooms, while others are on show in the Louvre. ![]() Until now, only a few pieces of the original Notre Dame rood screen, an ornate partition between the chancel and nave that separated the clergy and choir from the congregation, have remained. A team from the institute was called in to carry out a “preventive dig” under a section of the cathedral floor between February and April before a 100ft-high 600-tonne scaffold was built to reconstruct the monument’s spire. The discovery was revealed by France’s national archaeological institute, Inrap, on Thursday. ![]()
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