Conservation

Heads of state and howling winds welcome Notre-Dame cathedral back to life

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President-Elect Donald Trump were in attendance as President Macron presided over the reopening of the famed Parisian monument

Through the Notre-Dame restoration, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc has now become ‘untouchable’. But at what price?

The five-year restoration of the cathedral has cemented the reign of the 19th-century architect, but his methods may not meet modern standards

Paris heralds the return of Notre-Dame’s bells

The northern belfry’s mighty bells—the oldest having survived the French Revolution—have been restored in Normandy and reinstalled in the bell chamber, from where they will once again ring out

Restorers return La Scala’s coloured facade to former glory—in baby blue and pink

The exterior of the famed Milan opera house underwent its first clean-up in 20 years

Who was buried in Ornans? Restoration of Gustave Courbet’s intriguing masterwork may offer clues

The Musée d’Orsay hopes the restoration of ‘A Burial at Ornans’—once a Salon scandal, now a pride of the Paris museum—will unlock some of its secrets and reveal the painting to be even bigger and bolder than it appears now

The architecture graduate tasked with recording Notre-Dame’s renovation—in pencil and chalk

Over four years, and often perched on scaffolding, Axelle Ponsonnet has documented the project's progress behind the scenes

Green wood, axes and oaks: how ancient skills helped to raise Notre-Dame's new roof

A small army of carpenters combined traditional craftmanship with digital design tools to rebuild the medieval roof frame known as "the forest"

Lucky statues on Notre-Dame's spire to take up their position once more

Copper sculptures representing the Twelve Apostles and four New Testament Evangelists were removed for cleaning days before the fire

Art and technology shows in London and Los Angeles, a restored 17th-century cosmic atlas—podcast

Curators at Tate and Los Angeles County Museum of Art discuss the ways in which technology has shaped artists’ work, plus a chat about the “mesmerising” Harmonia Macrocosmica

‘A house of opportunities’: the changing fortunes of England’s largest country home

Seven years ago Wentworth Woodhouse was in a sorry state, now it turns over £3.5m a year—but how did this palace-sized property achieve such success?

Newly conserved star atlas, a masterpiece of 17th-century Dutch art, to go on display for first time

The Harmonia Macrocosmica by Andreas Cellarius, one of the most precious volumes in the Blickling Estate's library, was too fragile to be exhibited

Eike Schmidt unveils restoration and loans projects in Naples after losing Florence electoral bid

The director of the Museo di Capodimonte plans to restore 21 Renaissance paintings from the collection

Vatican launches AI-generated version of St Peter’s Basilica

Co-developed by Microsoft, the project also identified conservation issues at the world-famous church

'One of the most exciting unknown stories from the Napoleonic Wars': British escapee's military disguise goes on display in London

Midshipman Charles Hare's account of his escape from a French prison, alongside the outfit he fled in, can be seen from today at the National Maritime Museum

Churchill’s Monet—restored after many years of cigar smoke—goes on show in Courtauld blockbuster

Traces of the statesman’s smoke have been removed from the painting of Charing Cross Bridge, which took Monet 24 years to finish

Paul McCarthy throwing out vast installation no institution or collector stepped in to preserve

Last year, the artist put his 2013 installation “WS White Snow” on show in a Los Angeles warehouse in hopes of finding a long-term custodian

George Rickey sculpture partially collapses outside News Corp's New York headquarters

One of the work’s two hoop-like pendulums fell off outside the Manhattan offices of the Wall Street Journal publisher

Appeal to save Brighton Pavilion dome after ‘devastating’ damage discovery

Brighton and Hove Museums hopes to raise at least £10,000 to conserve the Grade I listed building

Campaigners celebrate scrapping of 'monstrous' Stonehenge tunnel scheme

Labour government cancels redevelopment in spending squeeze—but heritage bodies say conservation solutions are still needed

Lost self-portrait by UK painter Norman Cornish discovered behind bar scene

The undated work, which was during conservation work, is going on display in an exhibition at the Bowes Museum in County Durham

Castle in war-torn Yemen partially reopens

Emergency repairs at 11th-century fortress offer a ray of hope in country where dozens of historic sites are damaged or destroyed

Salisbury Cathedral conservation offers window into William Morris’s workshop

Edward Burne-Jones’s stained-glass work has been removed for conservation for the first time

‘We are not seeing the picture Rubens intended’: conservation reveals drastic changes made to acclaimed Judgement of Paris

More than a year of meticulous research and work has led to the painting being glowingly restored—while revealing amendments by an unknown artist that “changed the narrative completely”

Icom names Medea Ekner as director general

Ekner, who was appointed interim director general last year, has 25 years of museum experience in Sweden and New Zealand

Up in arms: Mexican archaeological bureau denounces damage to at least one mummy in Guanajuato’s famous museum

Local authorities respond that mummy deterioration is not new and even inevitable given a history of visitors “touching them or taking souvenirs, such as bits of clothing”

Kernel of truth: pollen cone stuck in paint reveals where Van Gogh’s Irises grew

His purple flowers have now faded to blue, as revealed during research for a Getty exhibition in October

Getting plastered: major conservation work begins on an extraordinary ceiling in Cornwall

Visitors have the unique chance to see the barrel-vaulted ceiling of the Long Gallery at Lanhydrock up close thanks to a scaffolding platform

Little-known mural Keith Haring made for an Iowa school goes on public view for first time

Created less than a year before the artist’s death, ‘A Book Full of Fun’ was painstakingly moved to the Stanley Museum of Art while the school undergoes renovation