Notre Dame reopened last year after suffering damage in a 2019 fire. Marcel Strauss via Unsplash

In 2018, Yves Ubelmann passed on the opportunity to recreate Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral in digital form via his company, Iconem, a startup specializing in digitizing cultural sites. At the time, the French founder felt the potential project wasn’t urgent. “Six months after, everything burned,” Ublemann told Observer. Had Ubelmann pursued the project, preservationists would have had access to a 3D model of the Gothic building, and the five-year effort to restore the cathedral’s extensive structural damage may have been streamlined. On Sunday (July 20th), just under eight months since the historic Parisian monument reopened its 862-year-old doors, Microsoft announced it was financing a partnership with Iconen and the French Ministry of Culture to ensure that such a replica is available for future generations.

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