Notre-Dame: First look inside refurbished cathedral.
France’s Emmanuel Macron has praised workers for achieving the “impossible” task of restoring Paris’s Notre-Dame cathedral after a major fire engulfed the Gothic jewel in 2019.
On Friday the world had a first look inside a resplendent new Notre-Dame as Macron conducted a televised tour to mark the cathedral’s imminent re-opening.
Five-and-a-half years after the devastating fire, Paris’s Gothic jewel has been rescued, renovated and refurbished – and it will offer visitors a breath-taking visual treat.
In a speech to the craftsmen and women who worked on the refurbishment, Macron said: “The blaze at Notre-Dame was a national wound, and you have been its remedy through will, through work, through commitment.
“I am so deeply grateful, France is so deeply grateful,” the president said during his speech, adding: “you have brought Notre-Dame back”.
Macron – accompanied by his wife Brigitte and Archbishop of Paris Laurent Ulrich – began a programme of ceremonies that will culminate with an official “entry” into the cathedral on 7 December and the first Catholic Mass the day after.
On entering the refurbished cathedral, Macron said it was now “repaired, reinvented and rebuilt”.
“It is sublime,” he said.
He was then shown highlights of the building’s €700m (£582m) renovation – including the massive roof timbers that replaced the medieval frame consumed in the fire.
At the end of his visit to Notre Dame, Macron told workers their restoration efforts had been indispensable. The French president was shown around the newly refurbished cathedral alongside Paris’s archbishop Laurent Ulrich and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Before Macron’s visit Notre-Dame’s revamped interior had been kept a closely-guarded secret – with only a few images released over the years marking the progress of the renovation work.
I had a glimpse inside on Friday, and what I saw was enough to convince me that it is a spectacular experience. There is a new, fresh face to this cathedral.
It is not just renovation or a rebuilding of the structure of the roof, it has also been a clean-up of crud and soot in the interior since the last restoration in the 1850s.f the cathedral, and then – at the peak of the conflagration – of the 19th Century spire crashing to the ground.
The cathedral – whose structure was already a cause for concern before the inferno – was undergoing external renovation at the time. Among the theories for the cause of the fire are a cigarette left by a worker or an electrical fault.
Some 600 firefighters battled the flames for 15 hours.
No one was killed or injured by the blaze.
At one point, it was feared that the eight bells in the north tower were at risk of falling, which would have brought the tower itself down, and possibly much of the cathedral walls.
In the end the structure was saved.
What was destroyed were the spire, the wooden roof beams (known as the “forest”), and the stone vaulting over the centre of the transept and part of the nave.
There was also much damage from falling wood and masonry, and from water from firehoses.
Thankfully what was saved made a much longer list – including all the stained-glass windows, most of the statuary and artwork, and the holy relic known as the Crown of Thorns. The organ – the second biggest in France – was badly affected by dust and smoke, but reparable.
Flames leaping from Notre Dame Cathedral and the remarkable restoration work which has now been completed by expert Parisian craftsmen. Pictures by AFP