Notre-Dame de Paris revealed to the world on Friday its “brilliance” regained after the devastating fire of April 2019, thanks to a final site visit by President Emmanuel Macron who congratulated himself on having held his “insane challenge” of reopening in five years.
“The Notre-Dame blaze was a national wound and you were its remedy through will, through work, through commitment […] You have achieved what we thought was impossible,” Mr. Macron told the artisans present during this visit before the official reopening on December 7 and 8.
“It’s sublime,” exclaimed the French president upon discovering the reconstructed cathedral in all its whiteness and length, during a stroll broadcast live on several French and international channels. “It is much more hospitable with this blond stone”, cleaned of the dirt accumulated over the decades, he added, assuring the speakers that they could “be proud”.
In a bad position politically, Mr. Macron, who sees in this reopening a “shock of hope”, is banking heavily on this meeting, which he has elevated to the rank of “French pride” with the successful Olympic Games of the last summer.
He has invited a large number of foreign leaders next weekend in the hope of making it a global event, but the list of those present is not yet known, and Pope Francis preferred to go to Corsica for a week later rather than in Paris.
“The president’s advisors hope that he will relaunch himself with Notre-Dame”, but “he will only derive political capital from it in the long term”, whispers a close friend of the president.
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The latter for a time hoped to speak in the cathedral during the reopening, but after tough negotiations with the diocese, he will speak in the square only.
All 2,000 people who contributed to the work were invited this Friday, more than 1,300 of whom were present, wood, metal and stone craftsmen, scaffolders and roofers, campanists, gilders, sculptors and even architects.
Patrons are also in the spotlight, while the construction project of the century, which cost some 700 million euros, was financed exclusively by donations.
In a tour of around ten stations, from the square to the framework, including the nave, the transept crossing and the Saint-Marcel chapel, the visit has been designed to show the main achievements of this titanic project. Quite a symbol, the stop at the base of the spire, reconstructed identically to that of Viollet-le-Duc which collapsed on April 15, 2019 on mondovision, raising a wave of global emotion.
The stroll was punctuated by presidential comments. “The altar imposes itself but does not overwhelm”, he slips into the nave, “it’s a real forest”, “this tangle is incredible”, he judges under the framework.
The Élysée, in presenting this visit to the press, did not skimp on superlatives, using the word “brilliance” no less than twenty times.
“Wonder”, “striking” view, “fireworks of colors”: presidential advisers promised a breathtaking spectacle, and a striking contrast with the “yawning vault”, the “charred waste” and the smell “unbearable” that Emmanuel Macron discovered on the evening of the fire.
“You see the cathedral as you have never seen it”, “five years after the vision of desolation”, said Philippe Jost, the head of restoration, during the visit. “I remember as if it were yesterday the Pietà which alone emerged” from the debris, replied the president, accompanied by his wife Brigitte Macron and the Archbishop of Paris Laurent Ulrich.
The flames, the causes of which have still not been determined, had notably ravaged the roof and the framework of this masterpiece of Gothic art from the 12th century.e century, which is among the most visited monuments in Europe.
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