PARIS: Notre-Dame will formally reopen Saturday five years after the Paris cathedral was devastated by fire, with US president-elect Donald Trump among world leaders there to celebrate its remarkably rapid restoration.
The reconstruction effort has cost around €700 million ($750 million), financed from donations, with the re-opening achieved within five years despite predictions it could take decades.
With the cathedral set to reopen its doors, let’s review five key dates in the Paris landmark’s colourful history.
First stones laid — 1160
Building the world-famous cathedral in the heart of the French capital began in 1160 and was not completed until almost a century later.
The project was spearheaded by the ambitious Bishop of Paris Maurice de Sully and had several striking features including vaults that reached up to 32 metres (105 feet), according to a study published in the journal PLOS ONE in 2023.
However, some elements of the gothic building’s construction remain unknown.
It is not clear, for example, how the builders “dared — and succeeded — in putting up such thin walls to such a height,” Maxime L’Heritier, an archaeologist at University Paris 8, told AFP in an interview in 2023.
Joan of Arc — 1455
Burnt on a stake in a public square after being accused of heresy, the case of Joan of Arc has become a legend in France.
In 1455, 24 years after her dramatic death at the age of around 19, a fresh trial opened to reconsider her case, taking place at Notre-Dame.
It concluded the verdict of Joan as a heretic had been arbitrary, paving the way for a second trial in Rouen, the original site of her public execution.
In 1456 her sentence was ruled null and void, elevating her to the status of French heroine —and centuries later, a saint.
Wine cellar — 1790s
During the French Revolution, the cathedral was plundered and seized as public property.
Anti-clerical radicals attacked the facade, removing biblical statues and decapitating them in the cathedral’s square, in acts reminiscent of the guillotining of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.
Over a few years in the 1790s, Notre-Dame was used for a variety of purposes, including storing barrels of wine for the Revolutionary Army.
Victor Hugo novel — 1831
Published in 1831, Victor Hugo´s novel “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” featured a host of colourful characters from the gypsy Esmeralda to Quasimodo, but at the centre was the cathedral.
The book was a huge hit and triggered an outpouring of emotion among Parisians over the state of disrepair into which the cathedral had fallen.
This popular enthusiasm contributed to an ambitious restoration project launched in 1844 and led by the architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc.
Lasting till 1865, it included the construction of a new spire, which had been dismantled during the Revolution.
Engulfed in blaze — 2019
The spire was among the features of the cathedral that collapsed in the blaze that shocked the world on April 15, 2019.
Onlookers on the banks of the Seine watched in horror as the fire ravaged not only the spire, which crashed down but also caused the central frame to collapse and engulfed the clock and part of the vault.
The cause of the blaze is not known, with an electrical fault or a cigarette among the theories.
It took 400 firefighters several hours to control the flames; stained glass windows, towers, bells and most artworks and relics survived.
The renovated Notre-Dame is set to reopen to the public on December 8, 2024.
