Notre Dame fire
© Thomas Samson, AFP/Getty ImagesFlames and smoke billow around the gargoyles decorating the roof and sides of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15, 2019. - A huge fire swept through the roof of the famed Notre-Dame Cathedral in central Paris on April 15, 2019, sending flames and huge clouds of grey smoke billowing into the sky.
French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to rebuild the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was devastated by a massive fire Monday. Reconstructing the intricate French Gothic cathedral is bound to be no simple task, and will likely take years, if not decades.

But some on Twitter pointed out a sliver of hope amidst the ashes: detailed 3D maps of the landmark have been created in recent years.

Ph.D. student Hannah Groch-Begley shared the work of art historian Andrew Tallon, who used laser scanners to create an immaculately accurate model of the cathedral.

Mounted on a tripod, the laser beam sweeps around the choir of a cathedral, for example, and measures the distance between the scanner and every point it hits. Each measurement is represented by a colored dot, which cumulatively create a three-dimensional image of the cathedral," explains a National Geographic profile of Tallon's work.

"If you've done your job properly," Tallon told the magazine, the scan is "accurate to within five millimeters."

Groch-Begley said Tallon passed away late last year.


Tallon's models aren't even the only immaculate models we have of Notre Dame. An even more unlikely hero has emerged: the video game "Assassin's Creed."


The video game series is known for its immaculate recreations of real-world places as its settings. "Assassin's Creed Unity" is set in Paris and an artist for the game, Caroline Miousse, told The Verge she spent two years finessing the appearance Notre Dame, down to each individual stone.

In other good news, it appears at least some of the priceless artifacts from inside the cathedral have also been spared. On Thursday, 16 religious statues had been removed from the peak for the first time in over a century to be taken for cleaning, and therefore escaped the blaze. The statues represented the 12 apostles and four evangelists.

It's not clear which other relics and artworks have been saved.

The blaze collapsed the cathedral's spire and spread to one of its landmark rectangular towers, but Paris fire chief Jean-Claude Gallet said the church's structure had been saved after firefighters managed to stop the fire spreading to the northern belfry.
flames destroy roof Notre-Dame Cathedral
Smoke billows as flames destroy the roof of the landmark Notre-Dame Cathedral in central Paris on April 15, 2019.
The exact cause of the blaze was not known, but French media quoted the Paris fire brigade as saying the fire is "potentially linked" to a $6.8 million renovation project on the church's spire and its 250 tons of lead. The Paris prosecutors' office ruled out arson and possible terror-related motives, and said it was treating it as an accident.
Notre Dame fire
© Eric Feferberg, AFP/Getty ImagesPeople kneel on the pavement as they pray outside watching flames engulf Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15, 2019.