Notre Dame Cathedral will welcome visitors again in 2024

French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul-Malak said that restoration work in the fire-damaged building would begin at the end of summer.

Notre Dame Cathedral is preparing to reopen to the faithful and the public in 2024, said French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul-Malak. Three years ago, Notre-Dame de Paris suffered a massive fire that destroyed its roof and collapsed its spire.

Now, according to the minister, the stage of clearing the building is over. This allows you to start restoration work at the end of the summer. “We are confident that 2024 will be the year when most of this work is completed, the year of the reopening of the cathedral to the faithful and the public,” Reuters quoted Rima Abdul-Malak as saying.

Shortly after the April 2019 fire, French President Emmanuel Macron said the 12th-century cathedral would be rebuilt and later vowed to open it by 2024 when the country would host the Olympic Games. Recall that after the incident, the possibility of changing the appearance of the roof and spire and recreating them in a more modern way was discussed.

However, it has now become known that they decided to abandon these plans and Notre Dame Cathedral will return to its pre-fire form with a 96-meter spire designed by architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc in the middle of the 19th century.

Notre Dame de Paris or Notre Dame Cathedral is best known for the novel by Victor Hugo, who set out to rekindle the French love for the cathedral. Here are some facts about the cathedral.

• During the French Revolution, the Parisians were ready to pay a bribe “for the needs of all revolutions that will still occur in other countries” to Robespierre, who otherwise threatened to demolish the cathedral.
• During the reign of Louis XIV, one and a half hundred years before the writing of the novel, Notre Dame was seriously damaged and lost all its stained glass windows. And just ten years after the publication of the novel, reconstruction began, in addition to returning its original appearance, giving Notre Dame and the famous gallery of chimeras.
• The construction of the cathedral lasted for almost two centuries, which, however, only benefited it. At the time of laying the first stone, French architecture was dominated by the Romanesque style, which was replaced by the Gothic during the construction process.
• It was assumed that the cathedral would be so large that it could accommodate all the inhabitants of Paris, who at that time numbered about ten thousand.
• The cathedral was so huge that a twelve-story house could have been placed in the middle nave.