When the wind blows around Notre Dame these days, strange, whistling chimes fill the air. A ghostly harmony made by the gaping holes in the old medieval structure, left by the fire exactly a year ago.

For most of the past year, this quiet music was drowned out by the noises of construction work, the tourists and traffic around Notre Dame. But today this Gothic giant stands silent and empty.

The cranes hang awkward and frozen above its scaffolding, the usual flow of tourists queuing for selfies outside the freshly-built hoarding has gone.

Image caption Daylight peers through the damaged roof of the cathedral

The restrictions in place to deal with coronavirus have meant that all restoration work here has stopped.
'Alone, but not abandoned'

"Notre Dame is an 850-year-old lady," the rector of Notre Dame, Patrick Chauvet, told me. "She's an injured, old lady."

"And for all the elderly, the injured, those in quarantine, or isolated in retirement homes, I think there's a symbolic link. There's no-one around Notre Dame here either; she's has been left alone, but not abandoned."

In the late afternoon of 15 April 2019, Monseigneur Chauvet was enjoying a drink at a nearby cafe when smoke began rising from the spire of Notre Dame.

Media captionThere were gasps from the crowd at the moment Notre-Dame’s spire fell

He ran towards the building he knows so well.

The fire spread quickly, blazing through the mass of medieval rafters - known as "the forest" - and bringing down the iconic spire.

For a few critical hours, firefighters warned the French president that Notre Dame might not be saved.
Image copyright Windfall Films
Image caption The old scaffolding damaged in the fire needs to be taken down very carefully

One year on, wooden buttresses have appeared on the outside walls, and a vast web of new scaffolding is going up around the building.

Ironically, it is a set of old scaffolding, put up before the fire to restore some of the cathedral statues, that poses the immediate threat.

It burned and twisted in the heat, and now needs to be dismantled and taken down.

Patrick Chauvet says the building is not yet totally secure.

"It's still fragile," he told me. "It just takes a storm, a tornado, and it will move. When the old scaffolding that is welded together is removed, then we can say the cathedral is 100% saved."

Claudine Loisel, a glass specialist working on the restoration, has been painstakingly testing the lead and grime on each panel of the building's 19th Century stained-glass windows, to check it's safe for restorers to begin their work.