Notre Dame Cathedral set to reopen in late 2024
Timeline will meet goal set by French president after devastating fire
PARIS — The reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is going fast enough to allow its reopening to visitors and faithful at the end of 2024, less than six years after a fire ravaged its roof, French officials said Monday.
The cathedral’s iconic spire, which collapsed in the blaze, will gradually start reappearing above the monument this year in a powerful signal of revival, the army general in charge of the colossal project, Gen. JeanLouis Georgelin, said.
“The return of the spire in Paris’ sky will, in my opinion, be the symbol that we are winning the battle of Notre Dame,” he said.
The reconstruction started last year after more than two years of work to make the monument stable and secure enough for artisans to start rebuilding it. In addition to toppling the spire, the April 15, 2019, fire damaged most of the roof and caused structural damage.
Authorities chose to rebuild the 12th century monument, a masterpiece of Gothic architecture, the way it was before. That includes recreating the 315-foot spire added in the 19th century by architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc.
Meanwhile, a free exhibition called Notre-Dame de Paris: At the Heart of the Construction Site will open to visitors Tuesday in an underground facility in front of the cathedral. It highlights ongoing operations on the site and the expertise and skills of workers. It also features some remains from the fire and works of art from the cathedral.
Georgelin said the cathedral will reopen in December 2024, in line with the goal set by President Emmanuel Macron just after the fire — yet it will be too late for the Paris Olympic Games scheduled in summer next year.
“My job is to be ready to open this cathedral in 2024, and we will do it,” Georgelin said. “We are fighting every day for that, and we are on a good path.”
Reopening means the Paris archbishop will be able to celebrate the Catholic liturgy in his cathedral and the monument will also be open for tourists to visit, he said.
Culture Minister Rima AbdulMalak said this doesn’t mean the renovation will be finished then. “There will still be some renovation work going on in 2025,” she said.
Meanwhile, the new exhibition near the cathedral will allow visitors, including those coming for the Olympics, “to live what could be this experience of visiting Notre-Dame in a brand new way,” she said. In addition to the free visit, a virtual reality show will allow paying visitors to dive into the history of the cathedral. “That will help also tourism in Paris,” she said.
Every day, about 1,000 people in the capital and across the country work to rebuild Notre Dame, Georgelin said.
“The biggest challenge is to comply precisely every day to the planning we have done,” he said. “We have a lot of different works to achieve: the framework, the painting, the stones, the vault, the organ, the stained glass and so on.”
Philippe Jost, managing director of the government agency overseeing the reconstruction, noted that the result “will be faithful to the original architecture.”
“We don’t do concrete vaults that look like stone; we do stone vaults that we rebuild as they were built in the Middle Ages,” Jost said, adding the roof framework will also be made from oak like it initially was.