NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL BUILT FROM 250.000 MATCHSTICKS

Alexandru Takacs, a 36 years old man, from Lugoj, Romania invested 250,000 matchsticks, five years of work and a lot of patience to fulfill his dream. He built a miniature replica of Notre Dame in Paris … from a picture.

While working as a laborer in an electronics factory, Alexandru Takacs has not given up his passion – architectural models made from matchsticks. The idea came to him one afternoon when he found Notre Dame in a magazine and decided to do it in miniature from matchsticks. After two years in which he finished almost half of the Parisian edifice, he watched “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. The building’s architecture in the movie didn’t resemble what he had built. “The cathedral was not rendered correctly in my magazine. My work didn’t respect the Gothic style. It was a disaster”, he says. He downloaded from the internet the plans of the building and continued to work, sometimes even 16 hours a day. The whole maquette of the cathedral is made only from matchsticks and glue. Only the stained glass windows were made on painted cardboard. For five years, Alexandru Takacs put match over match, and in order to bend the sticks, he boiled them.

HE DIDN’T WANT TO SELL IT

He exhibited it at the Army House in Lugoj, because elsewhere was not allowed, not being a member of the Artists Union, despite his talent. “A delegation of French came to Lugoj and authorities have remembered me. They gave me 100 euros and invited me a few days in France”, Alex said. So the young man was able to see Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in reality. He says other French offered him 50,000 euros for the maquette, but he couldn’t give up his masterpiece.