Daily Tribune
This picture, taken on 9 July 2019 in Paris, shows the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral during ongoing reconstruction work after it was badly damaged by a massive fire on 15 April 2019.
BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
Firefighters assemble their hoses as they gather at the River Seine near Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral as flames engulf the roof of the cathedral on 15 April 2019, in the French capital Paris.
STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP
French Culture Minister Franck Riester addresses the media as he stands next to the rooster which sat atop of the spire of the Notre-Dame cathedral, during a presentation of the exhibition "Revoir Notre-Dame de Paris" (To see again Notre-Dame de Paris) at the Culture Ministry in Paris, on 20 September 2019 as part of the heritage days.
Philippe LOPEZ / AFP
French designer Ionna Vautrin (L) and French sculptor and designer Guillaume Bardet (R), pose with Rector Olivier Ribadeau Dumas (C) following an interior design competition winner's announcement for the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral, in Paris on 23 June 2023. The Archbishop of Paris, Mgr Laurent Ulrich, selected the projects of Guillaume Bardet, 51, and Ionna Vautrin, 43, two French artists and designers chosen from some sixty candidates, who will produce the furniture in a foundry in the Drome region and a joinery in the Landes region of France.
Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP
This photograph shows the light reflected from stained glass windows on a wall in the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral in Paris, on 29 November 2024.
Sarah Meyssonnier / POOL / AFP
pokesperson of the 'Robin des Bois' association for environmental protection, Jacky Bonnemains shows a cartography of lead content on the Notre Dame cathedral site, in Paris, on 29 July 2019.
BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
![[FILE] French State Prosecutor Remy Heitz speaks during a press conference, in Paris, on 29 November 2020.](https://images.assettype.com/tribune/2024-12-07/yyltaorm/0008W64NK.jpg?w=1200&auto=format)
[FILE] French State Prosecutor Remy Heitz speaks during a press conference, in Paris, on 29 November 2020.
Alain JOCARD / AFP
Visitors take photographs with Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral in Paris on 25 October 2024, which is due to reopen to the public on 8 December 2024. French ministers have raised the idea of charging tourists to enter Paris' world-famous Notre-Dame cathedral when it opens in December 2024 after a five-year restoration due to its partial destruction when a fire broke out in 2019, a proposal that drew a rebuke from the city's diocese on 24 October 2024.
Grégoire CAMPIONE / AFP
The more than five-year reconstruction of Notre Dame cathedral has featured some near-miraculous recoveries, as well as several controversies.
With the cathedral set to formally re-open on Saturday, AFP looks at some of the key moments:
Paris firefighters won universal praise for their swift and decisive action on the evening of 15 April 2019, with officers later saying they thought they were only 30 minutes away from seeing the structure collapse.
Battling smoke and the risk of falling debris, they formed a human chain with church officials to evacuate the most precious artifacts and religious treasures, helping preserve most of the cathedral's irreplaceable contents.
Others saw divine intervention in how a copper statue of a rooster that had sat atop the building's incinerated 19th-century spire was found afterwards intact amid the scorched rubble.
Its contents -- three relics, including a small piece of the Crown of Thorns supposedly worn by Jesus before his crucifixion -- also survived, and the battered rooster is now on display in a Paris museum.
Inside the cathedral, images the day after the blaze revealed that a giant gold cross on the altar was still standing amid the still smouldering wreckage, a symbol of hope and defiance for many on a dark day for Christians and the country at large.
French President Emmanuel Macron called the fire "an opportunity to come together" but any sense of national unity after the disaster quickly broke down.
His suggestion that an "element of modern architecture" be included in the rebuild drew immediate criticism from conservatives who demanded that the reconstruction be faithful to the last major update by architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc in 1844.
The army general put in charge of the rebuild publicly fell out with the lead architect over the redesign, while entries for an architectural competition to select a new spire led to lurid headlines.
One suggestion shown by First Lady Brigitte Macron to then-culture minister Roselyne Bachelot resembled a "phallus with its base surrounded with golden balls," Bachelot wrote in a book.
In the end, a replica of the old spire was built.
Six new stained-glass windows are set to be installed featuring work by contemporary artists -- a modest nod to modernity and Macron's original vision.
Notre Dame's roof and spire were covered by around 400 tonnes of lead, a toxic heavy metal that melted and vaporised with the heat of the fire, with some of it thought to have polluted the surrounding area.
Authorities cleaned nearby schools and advised local residents to wipe surfaces in their homes because of the risk of poisoning.
A health charity joined forces with a union and parents of local schoolchildren to lodge a criminal complaint in 2022 that accused authorities of failing to take every precaution to prevent pollution.
Charges are possible if authorities or contractors are found to have been negligent in protecting the health of residents or workers sent in to decontaminate the site, with an investigating magistrate overseeing a probe.
The chief Paris prosecutor at the time of the fire, Remy Heitz, said shortly after the inferno that he believed that an accident such as an electrical fault or a cigarette butt was the most likely cause.
Some of the workers renovating the roof at the time of the fire were known to have smoked on site, but investigators have never been able to pinpoint the exact starting point.
Speculation about an arson attack has been investigated during five years of forensic analysis, but no evidence was found.
The current chief Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in April that "the closer we have got to the spot the fire started, and the more results of analyses come back, the more weight is lent to the theory of an accident."
Culture Minister Rachida Dati has proposed that visitors to the restored cathedral pay a five-euro ($5.25) entry ticket, with the funds set to be routed to some 4,000 churches in need of repairs around France.
Charging for entry -- entering Notre Dame was previously free -- would bring the tourist attraction into line with St Paul's cathedral in London or Milan's Duomo.
But senior French church leaders have criticized the idea, one senior bishop saying churches and cathedrals had "always been places open to all" and making money from visitors would be a "betrayal of their original vocation".
The French state owns Notre Dame and has the final say.
(Source: Adam PLOWRIGHT for AFP)
