Paris:

France will offer a first look inside the restored Notre Dame cathedral in Paris on Friday, five years after a fire destroyed the heritage landmark’s interior and toppled its spire.

Eight days before the cathedral reopens on December 7, President Emmanuel Macron will conduct an inspection, broadcast live on television, that will provide the first official insight into what the 850-year-old building now looks like from the inside.

Nous y sommes pic.twitter.com/oBjrTpuvFZ

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) 29 November 2024

Notre-Dame Paris cathedral badly damaged by fire on April 19, 2019 returns to its former glory after a sometimes-challenging restoration of pilgrims and worshipers on the weekend of December 7-8. Visitors will be welcomed.

Macron then set an ambitious goal to rebuild Notre Dame within five years and make it more beautiful than ever, a goal French officials say has been met.

Some 250 companies and hundreds of experts were mobilized for the multimillion-euro restoration dubbed the “building site of the century”.

All 2,000 people who contributed to the work have been invited to Friday’s event, with at least 1,300 expected to attend.

“This final site visit is an opportunity to especially thank them — from woodworkers to metal and stone, from scaffolders to roofers, from bell makers to art restorers. From gilders to masons and sculptors, from carpenters to organ builders, from architects, archaeologists, engineers and planners to logistic or administrative tasks,” Macron said during the visit.

Accompanied by his wife, Brigitte, Macron is expected to inspect key areas of the cathedral, including the nave, choir and chapel, from 0930 GMT and discuss the restoration in person with workers.

The restoration cost a total of about 700 million euros (more than $750 million at today’s rates).

It was funded by €846 million in donations from 150 countries in an unprecedented surge of solidarity.

A grand reopening is expected.

The 19th-century Gothic spire has now been brought back to life with an exact replica of the original, with stained windows regaining their color, walls gleaming after the fire stains have cleared and a restored organ ready to roar again. is

Invisible to visitors is a new mechanism to protect against any future fires, a sophisticated system of pipes ready to release millions of water droplets in the event of a new disaster.

Notre Dame, which welcomed 12 million visitors in 2017, is expected to receive a further figure of “14 to 15 million” after reopening, according to church officials.

French ministers have also floated the idea of ​​charging tourists an entrance fee to the site, but the Diocese of Paris has said free entry is an important principle to maintain.

The Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, told AFP last month that Macron would give an address inside Notre Dame on Saturday, December 7, to mark the reopening.

It is highly unusual for a political leader to be allowed to address the faithful inside a Catholic religious building. France is constitutionally a secular country with a strict separation between church and state.

World leaders are expected to attend but the guest list is yet to be announced.

He added that the following day, Sunday December 8, will see the first mass and consecration of the new altar.

Macron said in December that he had invited Pope Francis to reopen the cathedral, but the head of the Catholic Church announced in September, surprising some observers, that he would not be attending.

Instead, the Pope is making a historic visit to the French island of Corsica next weekend.

The French Catholic Church has been rocked by a series of sexual abuse allegations against clerics in recent years, most recently involving a monk known as Abbé Pierre, who became a household name for helping the destitute. is

Five years on, investigations into the cause of the fire are ongoing, with initial findings suggesting an accidental cause such as a short circuit, a welder’s torch or a cigarette butt.

(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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