French officials said Monday that the Notre Dame Cathedral will be open to the public again in late 2024, more than five years after its famous spire and roof fell in a fire. The $865 million project to rebuild the church started in April 2019, but progress was slow because of the COVID-19 lockdown, a lot of archaeological finds under the church's foundation, and a controversial plan to modernize the church. The architect Philippe Villeneuve will be in charge of the restoration, the Paris Tourist Office said in a statement. "The general idea is to rebuild the cathedral exactly as it was before, including the spire," the statement said.
After two years of digging inside the old building to make sure it was stable enough for craftspeople to start their work, reconstruction began in earnest last year. The plan of the architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc will be used to rebuild the spire after President Emmanuel Macron scrapped unpopular plans to replace the 19th-century structure with a "contemporary architectural gesture." Even though there was a lot of public outcry, France's National Heritage and Architecture Commission, which oversees restoration projects for important landmarks, gave the go-ahead for a makeover of the cathedral's interior. According to the plan, the new interior could have artworks from the 20th and 21st centuries hanging next to Old Master works from the cathedral's collection. The tabernacle could also be moved to give visitors more space.
At first, the French government planned to reopen the cathedral in the summer of 2024, in time for the summer Olympics that year. Instead, people going to Paris for the event can see the newly opened exhibition "Notre-Dame de Paris: at the heart of the construction site" in an underground gallery near the cathedral. The show is about the ongoing process of rebuilding. It shows how skilled the 1,000 artisans on the restoration team are and how much work they have to do. The plan calls for rebuilding the building with materials that fit the time period. For example, the roof, which is called "The Forest," is made of wood from 1,000 150-year-old trees.
Jean Dubreil