The Nantes Cathedral fire
Nantes, France, 2020
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
On the morning of Saturday, 18 July 2020, at about 7:45 am, a fire broke out in the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Nantes, a Gothic monument built between 1434 and 1891. About a hundred firefighters brought it under control at around 10 am. The flames destroyed the great organ in the organ loft, whose origins went back to 1619, the large stained-glass window of the west façade, installed in 1498 and showing Anne of Brittany and her mother, and a painting by Hippolyte Flandrin from 1836.
Investigators found three separate seats of fire, one in the organ and one on each side of the nave, and no sign of forced entry, and the prosecutor opened an arson inquiry. A 39-year-old diocesan volunteer in charge of opening and locking the cathedral doors, who had locked it the evening before, was questioned and released. On 25 July 2020 he confessed to starting the fire. He was a Rwandan asylum seeker whose application had been rejected and who had been ordered to leave France since the end of 2019.
Sources
In the game
Three Fires
Nantes, Saturday, 18 July 2020, 11 am. Firefighters are still hosing down the façade of Saint-Hervé Cathedral. At 7:44 am, passers-by saw smoke coming out of the rose window, and by 10 am the fire was under control.
Released under judicial supervision, he killed in August 2021, in the Vendée, the priest who was housing him. In March 2023 he was tried for the fire: the prosecution spoke of anger and a feeling of revenge linked to his administrative situation, the damage was estimated at more than 40 million euros and the sentence was four years in prison. The cathedral reopened on 27 September 2025, with works planned until 2028. The game borrows the three fires, the door with no forced entry and the keeper of the keys; the characters and the outcome are fiction.
