French president tours medieval cathedral in Paris to view restoration after devastating 2019 fire
The restoration of Paris’s Notre Dame after its partial destruction by fire five years ago will give the world a “shock of hope”,Alongside his wife, Brigitte, and the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, the French president was shown around the rebuilt medieval cathedral on Friday morning by Philippe Villeneuve, the chief architect of France’s national monuments.
Three thousand wooden dowels had been painstakingly fashioned by a carpenter over four months, from oaks that had to match the wood of the structural beams. “Our heritage is so diverse and rich,” Villeneuve said. “Notre Dame has allowed us to reproduce the same techniques.” In a speech in front of about 1,300 craftspeople, Macron said: “The shock of the reopening will be as great as that of the fire, but it will be a shock of hope.”He thanked those who had contributed to the restoration effort with their labour and financial donations. “The blaze at Notre Dame was a national wound and you were the remedy, through your determination, hard work and commitment,” he said.
A special mention was given to the firefighters who had run into the flames and “saved this cathedral”., destroying most of the wood and metal roof and the spire. The precise cause of the blaze was never established but investigators believed it to be accidental, started by either a cigarette or a short circuit in the electrical system.
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