The 19th-century bells that sound from Paris’s Cathedral of Notre-Dame will soon toll their final hour, as they are melted down to create new ones, reports the New York Times.
In honor of its 850th anniversary in 2013, the iconic cathedral is getting a $3.5 million facelift, and part of the improvements will involve replacing the existing bells – which are only 150 years old – with nine new ones.
The four current bells – named after French saints Angélique-Françoise, Antoinette-Charlotte, Hyacinthe-Jeanne and Denise-David – have sounded every 15 minutes without fail since 1856. They chimed in the end of World War I and marked the liberation of Paris in 1944. They have witnessed French history, argue preservationists, and were made famous by Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Cast from bronze alloy, church bells don’t last forever, and the ones that sit atop Notre-Dame are "damaged and badly tuned," says bell expert Hervé Gouriou.
While the historical bells will be melted down and recast, their replacements will actually be closer in design to the original 17th-century bells that once adorned the tower: "We don’t destroy the bells," insists the cathedral’s rector, Reverend Patrick Jacquin. "We only intensify the sound of Notre-Dame."