Five years after the devastating fire of April 2019, Notre-Dame de Paris will reopen its doors on Sunday. The guides of Casa, an association commissioned by the diocese, are impatient to be able to resume their profession inside the cathedral where groups will be able to enter from June 2025.
“We are opposite Notre-Dame de Paris, the weather is absolutely superb.” Five years after the devastating fire of April 2019, Notre-Dame de Paris will reopen its doors on Sunday during a major ceremony. In the meantime, Nicolas, 63, is making his last visits outside. This retired volunteer guide, who is part of the Casa guides association commissioned by the diocese, will adapt his circuit and his story.
“We have referents who train us and we will have to train again inside. The layout of the interior route is different, visitors will enter through the central portal… It will be more than a mission, that is going to be an incredible emotion!”, he enthuses.
“A new page opens for Notre-Dame”
Still kept at a distance from the cathedral by a metal barrier, unknowns persist for the enthusiast, such as the duration of the journey and the place the fire will take there. “What is certain is that there is a new page opening for Notre-Dame. The fire is part of its history. We naturally evoke it in the exterior visit, inside this will certainly be a little less since what will speak to us now is the interior, the spiritual space which will touch the visitors.”
15 million euros per year are expected compared to 10 million euros before the fire. Nicolas participates in word of mouth so that the association recruits new guides who will present the cathedral in its three dimensions: artistic, historical and spiritual.
