Notre-Dame de Paris (1930): the invention of indirect light
In June 1930, Fernand Jacopozzi illuminated Notre-Dame de Paris with 500 hidden projectors — in so doing inventing the technique of indirect architectural lighting that the whole world would copy.
June 1930. Fernand Jacopozzi receives an unusual commission: illuminate Notre-Dame de Paris for the festivities marking the cathedral’s centenary. But this time, no surface bulbs, no visible garlands.
An unprecedented technique
Jacopozzi stakes everything on invisibility. 500 projectors are concealed in the bushes of the parvis and along the flying buttresses, trained on the stone. No visible cables, no bulbs hanging from the gargoyles.
The cathedral is bathed in light that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere — as if the stone itself were luminous.
The birth of architectural lighting
This technique — projecting light onto a building rather than emitting it from the building — is a revolution. It will be copied around the world and remains to this day the foundational principle of monumental lighting.
The newspapers speak of a “luminous miracle”. Le Figaro devotes its front page to the event.
The legacy
Today, virtually every illuminated cathedral, monument, and tourist site in the world uses a variant of this technique, invented by Jacopozzi in 1930. He never patented it.