From the nave to the altar, including its organ, Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral arrives this Friday, November 29 at the end of the first phase of renovation allowing its reopening to the public on December 8.
A striking contrast. After more than 2,000 days of work, the President of the Republic visited, this Friday, November 29, the final time the construction site of Notre-Dame de Paris before the inauguration ceremony and the reopening of the doors of the building to visitors and believers on December 7 and 8.
The opportunity, five years after the fire of April 15, 2019, to observe the evolution of three significant places in the cathedral: the organ, the altar and the nave.
• The organ ready when you wake up
The great organ of the cathedral as well as the stones of the walls surrounding it were completely blackened the day after the fire, in April 2019. The instrument and its approximately 8,000 pipes were covered in dust and pollution linked to the disaster, and some of its elements were deformed by the heat.
The organ will be awakened for the first time since the fire during the inauguration of the cathedral on December 7, to mark the start of the celebrations for the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris.
• The miraculous altar
It was one of the images that had the most impact on the French and the whole world five years ago. After the fire, the altar and its golden cross seemed intact and still standing after the tragedy.
The whole, still surrounded on the left by charred rubble and the first construction equipment that entered the building in May 2019, gives way to immaculate ground, trodden this morning by the President of the Republic who notably rediscovered Louis' Vow XIII.
• The nave repaired
Another notable moment of the disaster of April 2019, the fall of the spire of Notre-Dame which had been consumed by the flames taking with it a piece of the nave of the cathedral.
The protective nets, installed just after the fire to prevent any further falling of destroyed objects, have since been removed. The keystone of the nave is also back, just below the new spire of Notre-Dame, overlooking the stone columns having regained their whiteness.
