Notre-Dame de Paris will reopen its doors on December 7, 2024. The famous Parisian cathedral will soon welcome the public, after more than five years of closure following a fire on April 15, 2019. The tragedy moved the whole world, leading to a “exceptional international mobilization“, according to the Notre-Dame Foundation. The latter was one of the four organizations (with the Heritage Foundation, the Fondation de France and the Center des Monuments Nationaux) selected by the State to lead the collection for the restoration of the building religious in the days following the fire.
The collection counts 62,000 French and international donors, which represents 358 million euros, figures the foundation. This one “has also collected, apart from the subscription devoted to the restoration, 7 million euros for the interior fittings of the cathedral, the cost of which is borne by the diocese of Paris“, she specifies in a press release this Monday, November 18.
“To adapt to this unprecedented challenge, the foundation has diversified its collection methods and modernized them: auctions of objects bequeathed by testators, online broadcasts with the participation of the archbishop of Paris or the rector of the cathedral, as well as the development of digital collection, which today represents a third of total donations.”
Other projects to come
One hundred and fifty million euros, including 68 from the foundation, were used to secure the monument between April 2019 and summer 2021. Then, 552 million euros, including 226 from the foundation, were spent on the restoration of the cathedral between summer 2021 and December 2024. The remaining 64 million euros from the foundation will be used to continue the restoration from 2025 to 2028, in particular to finance work on the exteriors linked to weather damage.
Owner of the cathedral, the State alone financed the restoration work before 2016. Between 2000 and 2016, 16 million euros were released. Then in 2017, a ten-year framework agreement allowed the Notre Dame Foundation, via its sheltered foundation FAPP (Fondation Avenir du Patrimoine à Paris) and the American foundation Friends of Notre-Dame, created by the diocese of Paris, to collect donations from individuals and businesses in order to speed up the necessary work. At that time, it was planned to collect 60 million euros over ten years to enable the most urgent work to be carried out. “The restoration of the spire had been initiated, thus saving the apostles, who were airlifted a few days before the fire to be restored“, says the foundation.
Despite the reopening of the building and a budget already blocked for the continuation of its restoration, the foundation announces that it will continue the collection, in particular to cover the costs linked to the work on the exterior of the sacristy or the presbytery.
