Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Dendrochronologia journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dendro ORIGINAL ARTICLE The roof is on fire! A dendrochronological reconstruction of the restoration of the Basilica of Our Lady in Tongeren (Belgium) Kristof Haneca a, ⁎ , Sjoerd van Daalen b a Flanders Heritage Agency, Koning Albert II-laan 19, bus 5, 1210 Brussels, Belgium b Van Daalen Dendrochronologie, H.G. Gooszenstraat 1, Kamer 15, 7415CL Deventer, The Netherlands 1 ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Dendrochronology Forest history Roof constructions Timber trade Wood anatomy ABSTRACT A dendrochronological study of the roofs of the Basilica of Our Lady in Tongeren (Belgium) showed that the current roofs date to the period right after the deliberate burning of the church in 1677. High resolution den- drochronological dates – based on wood-anatomical observations of the outermost tree-ring – combined with detailed archival sources, allow us to trace the progress of reconstruction of the various roofs throughout the years following the fire at an intra-annual resolution. This provides an exceptionally detailed timeline of both the temporal and spatial progress of the reconstruction of the roofs of the Basilica of Our Lady. As such, this case- study can serve as a very detailed reference for the study of post-medieval roofs and the workflow during their construction. 1. Introduction The Basilica of Our Lady in Tongeren (Belgium, Fig. 1) has a long and turbulent history. The construction of the current church started in the 13 th century, following the local, Brabantine interpretation of the Gothic style (Fig. 2a and b). From 1999 onwards the church has been under restoration and archaeological research was done within the building (Van den Hove et al., 2002). These archaeological excavations in and around the church have demonstrated that the history of the Basilica dates back to the foundation of the town of Tongeren – the oldest town in Flanders – in 10 BC (Ervynck et al., 2014). In the 4 th century AD, Roman houses were replaced by a Roman basilica (meeting house), that at some point, was possibly used as a pre-Christian church. During the following centuries several churches were erected, expanded and rebuilt on this site. The current Basilica of Our Lady officially became a protected his- torical monument in 1936, and was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site (1999) 2 within the list of Belfries of Belgium and France. It is known from historical sources that on August the 28 th and 29 th 1677 Tongeren was purposely set on fire at the command of the French military authority in order to weaken its strategical value during the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1679). The Church of Our Lady suffered heavily from the fire and its roofs and tower were destroyed, leaving only the walls upright (Driesen, 1854; Geukens, 1990; Scheepers, 2009). Shortly after the fire, a damage report was written and plans were made for the restoration of the church, but the presence of French troops prevented work from starting. The current roof construction is considered to be the result of the restoration campaign that followed after the demolishing fire. In order to verify whether the current roof indeed dates back to the end of the 17 th century and if so, to further document the restoration efforts un- dertaken at that time, a dendrochronological survey was performed on the roofs of the Basilica of Our Lady. 2. Materials and method 2.1. The roof constructions The roof construction of the Basilica of Our Lady consists of several distinct parts: the choir, transept, nave and two roofs over the aisles. The roof over the choir is composed of 5 trusses, numbered from east to west from 1 to 5 (Fig. 2c). On the first two trusses Roman carpenter marks are inscribed, whilst on the others Arabic numerals were used. Each truss is composed of two inclined trusses with roof plates and a ridge truss with central posts supporting the ridge purlin. Additionally, on both sides, purlins are present half way up the rafters of the low- ermost inclined truss (Fig. 3). The roof above the nave of the church and transept has a completely http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dendro.2017.05.001 Received 24 March 2017; Received in revised form 27 April 2017; Accepted 13 May 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. 1 www.dendro.nl. E-mail addresses: Kristof.Haneca@vlaanderen.be (K. Haneca), vandaalen@dendro.nl (S. van Daalen). 2 UNESCO entry 943bis [online: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/943]. Dendrochronologia 44 (2017) 153–163 Available online 24 May 2017 1125-7865/ © 2017 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. MARK