Eight days before the reopening of Notre Dame de Paris to the public, French President Emmanuel Macron has visited the restored cathedral.
Some 2,055 days after the devastating fire that shook France to its core, the cathedral was restored to its former glory in record time — and some even say it’s better than ever.
With his November 29 visit, Macron fulfilled the pledge he made shortly after the blaze in April 2019, vowing the religious landmark would be restored within five years, with the goal of making it “even more beautiful” than before.
To facilitate this rapid reconstruction, the French Government had passed a law allowing it to bypass certain regulations that could have slowed down the process, creating a public body under direct presidential supervision to oversee the work.
The anticipated cost of restoring Notre Dame Cathedral has been put at €846 million. More than 340,000 donors and patrons from 150 countries contributed to the rebuild. Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) chairman Bernard Arnault contributed €200 million and Christie’s owner and chairman of Kering François Pinault put in €100 million.
With considerable assistance from affluent people and corporations, the restoration has mostly been financed by private donors and enterprises. To ensure that the money was accessible for both emergency repairs and continuing care of the cathedral, the government and the Catholic Church have both made contributions to the restoration efforts.
The Notre Dame Foundation was the first funder of this large-scale restoration, providing €358 million for the building and counting 62,000 French and international donors. In addition, it has also collected €7 million for the interior fittings of the cathedral.
The French President paid tribute to the elite craftspeople who repaired the Notre Dame and gave them each a document, in the form of a parchment, which attested to their participation in the construction site and quality as a builder of Notre Dame.
They were praised for their hard work, given the exceptional nature of such a complex restoration of a historical and religious monument within this specific time frame.
“You have transformed coal into art,” Macron said.
“The inferno of Notre Dame was a national wound and you were its remedy by will, by work, by commitment … You have achieved what we thought impossible,” he told the craftspeople.
Around 2,000 crafters from 250 companies worked on the restoration.
Rebuilding the fallen vaults in the nave, the transept’s north arm and the transept’s crossing marked the start of the vault and masonry repair process in January 2022. At the same time, the fire-weakened stones were either replaced or repaired, especially those of the transept’s two arms, the nave’s vaults, the choir and the side walls and gable walls.
The cathedral’s whole infrastructure has been redesigned, including the fire safety system, which now includes a water mist device for the oak frames. New chairs for the faithful have been installed. A sound system and internal lighting have also been constructed by the Parisian diocese in accordance with Catholic worship.
“She has been both restored, reinvented and rebuilt, all at the same time,” Macron. “It is sublime.”
In an emotional speech, Macron honoured General Jean-Louis Georgelin, who supervised the reconstruction of the cathedral from 2019 to 2023. The 74-year-old former chief of staff died after a fall in the mountains in the Pyrenees in August, 2023 without having seen the completion of the reconstruction.
