Two years after a fire tore through Paris’s most famous cathedral and shocked the world, French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday visited the Notre-Dame Cathedral to observe the renovation and thank the workers at the site.
Flanked by ministers, architects and the retired French army general who is overseeing the restoration of the 12th century monument, Macron inspected the progress of the ambitious rebuilding project.
From the rooftop, now largely covered by a complex scaffolding structure, work platforms and in places a tarpaulin "umbrella", Macron peered down into the Notre-Dame Cathedral’s damaged transept and thanked workers on the site.
"We're all impressed with what we see, with the work that has been achieved in two years," Macron told a group of workers with the Paris skyline behind him. "Bravo and thank you."
In the hours after the blaze, Macron promised a distraught nation that the cathedral would be rebuilt and later said it would be reopened in some form to worshippers by 2024.
More than 700 days after workers scrambled to shore-up Notre-Dame's flying buttresses, stabilise the bell towers and install hundreds of movement sensors, the effort to secure site is almost complete. The actual restoration stage is set to begin before the end of 2021, General Jean-Louis Georgelin, the former army chief of staff named by Macron to head the renovation, told France Inter radio.
>> Read more: Notre-Dame awaits resurrection as deadline looms
Complex operation
The first phase of the project was complicated by the need to remove 200 tonnes of twisted metal after the fire consumed 40,000 pieces of scaffolding that had been erected around the spire at the time of the blaze.
Work was also halted during the first summer after the fire because of worries over lead contamination and has since at times been slowed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Macron's five-year restoration target would mean the cathedral could be visited again when Paris hosts the 2024 summer Olympics.
He reiterated the objective a year later, despite the delays due to the pandemic.
While Notre-Dame will be reopened for worship in April 2024, restoration work will actually have to continue beyond that date, according to Georgelin.
The rebuild is helped by some 833 million euros ($991 million) collected in a national and international donation campaign launched immediately after the fire, although this may not be enough to push the restoration over the finishing line.
The interior of the cathedral is today marked by a web of scaffolding, surrounded by nets and tarpaulins, where carpenters, rope workers, scaffolders and crane operators hurry around.
Meanwhile, investigators are trying to shed more light on the causes of the fire.
Several shortcomings in the security of the cathedral were identified, especially the alarm system which meant that the alert to firefighters was late – and in the electrical system of one of the elevators.
An accident, possibly caused by a short circuit or discarded cigarette butt, remains a likely explanation, but the extent of the damage has made drawing any final conclusions impossible.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)
