Paris reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral planned by 2024
Reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is progressing fast enough to allow it to reopen to visitors and worshipers in late 2024, less than six years after a fire ravaged its roof, French officials said on Monday.
The cathedral’s iconic spire, which collapsed in the fire, will gradually reappear over the monument this year to give a strong signal for its revival, said Army General General Jean-Louis Georgelin, in charge of the colossal project.
“The return of the spire to the Paris sky will, I believe, symbolize that we are winning the battle of Notre Dame,” he told the Associated Press.
Rebuilding itself began last year after more than two years of work to make the monument strong and secure enough for craftsmen to begin rebuilding.
The authorities have decided to rebuild the 12th-century monument, a masterpiece of Gothic architecture, as it was before. These include the replica of the 93-meter spire added by architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century.
Meanwhile, an exhibition titled “Notre-Dame de Paris: At the heart of the construction site” is scheduled to open to visitors on Tuesday in an underground facility in front of the cathedral. Accessible for free, it highlights the day-to-day operations of the site and the expertise and skills of the staff. It also displays some remains of the fire and artwork from the cathedral.
General Georgelin said the cathedral would reopen in December 2024, in line with the target set by President Emmanuel Macron shortly after the fire – but it will be too late for the Olympics scheduled for next summer.
“My job is to be ready to open this cathedral in 2024. And we will do it,” General Georgelin said. “We fight for this every day and are on the right track.”
This “means that the archbishop of the capital will once again be able to celebrate the Catholic liturgy in his cathedral,” and the monument will also “be open to tourists,” he said.
Culture Minister Rima Abdul-Malak told the AP that this does not mean that all renovations will be completed by then. “There will still be renovation work in 2025,” she emphasized.
Meanwhile, the new exhibition near the cathedral will allow visitors, including those coming for the Olympics, “to have this experience of visiting Notre-Dame in a whole new way,” she said . In addition to the free visit, a virtual reality show allows paying visitors to immerse themselves in the history of the cathedral. “It will also help tourism in Paris,” she added.
Every day, about 1,000 people work in the capital and across the country to rebuild Notre Dame, General Georgelin said.
“The biggest challenge is to stick exactly to our planning every day,” he emphasized. “We have a lot of different work to do: the scaffolding, the painting, the stones, the vault, the organ, the stained glass and so on.”
Philippe Jost, executive director of the government agency responsible for the reconstruction, noted that the result will be “true to the original architecture” both because “we are sticking to the vanished forms of the cathedral” and because “we are also sticking to the materials”. . and building methods” of the Middle Ages.
“We don’t make concrete vaults that look like stone, we make stone vaults that we recreate as they were built in the Middle Ages,” Jost said, adding that the roof framework will also be made of oak as originally.
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AP journalist Alexandre Turnbull contributed to the story.
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