Emmanuel Macron and a TV crew headed this morning to Notre-Dame, which reopens next weekend five and a half years after the devastating fire.
The French President journeyed with cameras and journalists to the iconic Paris cathedral to view the epic renovation, which is estimated to have cost around €700M ($740M).
In images shown by BBC News, Macron arrived with the TV crew and was given an introduction to the tour of the medieval building alongside France’s Première Dame, the minister for culture, and the mayor of Paris.
He was welcomed inside by the chief architect of France’s national monuments, shown sacred objects that survived the fire and given explanations of how areas such as the roof and window were remade. The BBC’s Paris Correspondent wrote that it had been a “spectacular experience.”
Notre-Dame will reopen to the public next weekend. It comes five and a half years after the devastating fire to the 800-year-old building, which broke out in the attic, causing the famous wooden spire to collapse and most of the wooden roof to be destroyed. Soon after, Macron set a five-year deadline to restore the cathedral, which has just been missed but was impacted by external factors like the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tourists are expected to flock next weekend to the cathedral, which remains one of Paris’s most impressive tourist sites. A Prime Video doc about the incident, Notre-Dame on Fire, aired in 2022 and was flagged earlier this week by a French study into streamer investment.
