JAKARTA - Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France will reopen to visitors and devotees by the end of 2024, less than six years after the fire hit its roof, French officials said Monday.
The summit of the cathedral tower collapsed in flames, but will gradually reappear above it this year, said the military officer in charge of the project, General Jean-Louis Georgelin.
"The return of the tower in Paris' sky in my opinion will be a symbol that we won the Notre Dame battle," General Georgelin said, computing The National News from AP March 7.
Reconstruction began last year, after more than two years of work to make cathedral stable and safe enough for workers to start rebuilding.
Authorities have chosen to rebuild the 12th century monument, a Gotik architectural masterpiece, as before. That includes re-creating the 93 meters tall tower added in the 19th century by architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc.
Meanwhile, an exhibition called Notre-Dame de Paris at the heart of the construction site opened to visitors on Tuesday at the underground center in front of the cathedral. This free-cost exhibition highlights ongoing operations on site, expertise and skills of workers. It also features some of the remainder of the fires and works of art from the cathedral.
General Georgelin said the cathedral would reopen in December 2024, in line with the goals set by President Emmanuel Macron, just after the fire.
"My job is to prepare to open this cathedral in 2024 and we will," said General Georgelin.
"We fight every day for it and we are on a good path," he said.
This means the capital bishop will be able to return to celebrating Catholic liturgy in his cathedral, as well as open to tourist visits, he said.
Meanwhile, Minister of Culture Rima Abdul-Malak said, that does not mean that all renovations will be completed at that time.
"There will still be some renovation work that will take place in 2025," said Abdul-Malak.
Meanwhile, a new exhibition near the cathedral will allow visitors, including those arriving for the Olympics, "to go through this Notre Dame experience in a completely new way," he said.
While virtual reality shows, will allow paying visitors to dive into the history of the cathedral.
"It will also help tourism in Paris," said Abdul-Malak.
It is known, every day in the capital and across the country, about 1,000 people work to rebuild Notre Dame, said General Georgelin.
"The biggest challenge is to comply exactly every day of planning that we have done," he explained.
We have a lot of different works to achieve: skeletons, paintings, stones, vaults, organs, repatriated glass and so on," he said.
Separately, Philippe Jost, managing director of the government agency overseeing the reconstruction, said the results "would be in accordance with the original architecture".
Jost said "we stick to the lost cathedral shape" and "we stick to the medieval materials and methods of construction".
"We didn't make a concrete dome that looked like a rock, we built the stone dome that we rebuilt as it was built in the Middle Ages," he said, adding that the roof skeleton would also be made of ek wood like the original.
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