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Item 1 of 2 A woman takes a picture with her smartphone, as people queue to visit the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral soon after it reopened after its restoration in Paris, France, December 27, 2024. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo
[1/2]A woman takes a picture with her smartphone, as people queue to visit the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral soon after it reopened after its restoration in Paris, France, December 27, 2024. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
July 21 (Reuters) - Microsoft
(MSFT.O), opens new tabis teaming up with the French government to create a digital replica of Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral, France's most visited monument, the U.S. tech company's president, Brad Smith, said on Monday.
The 862-year-old Gothic masterpiece was reopened last December after a five-year restoration following a devastating fire in 2019.
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A digital replica will serve as a record of the building's architectural details, Microsoft said. It will also provide a virtual experience for visitors and those unable to visit.
The cathedral became a symbol of Paris and France after Victor Hugo used it as a setting for his 1831 novel "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame". Quasimodo, the main character, has been portrayed in Hollywood movies, an animated Disney adaptation and in musicals.
Last year, Microsoft worked with Iconem, a French company that specialises in digitalisation of heritage sites, on a digital replica of St Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.
"One of the things we learned from the work at St Peter's is how a digital twin can help support the ongoing maintenance of a building. Because you capture a digital record of every centimetre and what is there and what it's supposed to look like," Smith told Reuters.
"The ability to create a digital twin right now I think will provide an enormously valuable digital record that I believe people are going to be using 100 years from now," he said.
Since 2019, Microsoft has digitally preserved heritage sites and events including Ancient Olympia in Greece, Mont Saint-Michel in France and the 80th Anniversary of the Allied Beach Landings in Normandy.
Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Susan Fenton
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An agenda-setting and market-moving journalist, Foo Yun Chee is a 21-year veteran at Reuters. Her stories on high profile mergers have pushed up the European telecoms index, lifted companies' shares and helped investors decide on their next move. Her knowledge and experience of European antitrust laws and developments helped her break stories on Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and Apple, numerous market-moving mergers and antitrust investigations. She has previously reported on Greek politics and companies, when Greece's entry into the eurozone meant it punched above its weight on the international stage, as well as on Dutch corporate giants and the quirks of Dutch society and culture that never fail to charm readers.
