President Macron tours Notre Dame cathedral, five years after blaze
By Antoinette Radford, Joshua Berlinger and Saskya Vandoorne, CNN
Updated 2:58 PM EST, Fri November 29, 2024
9:44 p.m. GMT+7, November 29, 2024
Today’s live coverage of French President Emmanuel Macron’s tour of the restored Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has ended. Read through the posts below to see how it all unfolded, and check out the best images from CNN’s photo gallery of the cathedral’s restoration.
9:17 p.m. GMT+7, November 29, 2024
Macron completes his tour of the restored Notre Dame cathedral. Here's what you may have missed
French President Emmanuel Macron concluded his tour of Notre Dame with an emotional speech, thanking all those involved in restoring the cathedral to its former glory.
Here’s a recap of how the tour unfolded:
Macron started at the small forecourt outside the cathedral.
Then, he visited the nave — the part of the cathedral where the congregation sits.
The group of officials then visited the transept crossing, climbed to the roof for a tour of the new vault structures and saw how they were built.
The French president then visited the chancel screen and Saint Marcel’s chapel, two magnificent artistic elements restored by two separate artists with bright colors.
Macron was then shown the southern ambulatory and the restoration of the Vow of Louis XIII.
The tour ended with Macron seeing the Grand Organ, before dozens of people involved in the restoration work got their first look inside the cathedral.
Speaking to those who toured the gallery, Macron said he was “infinitely grateful.”
“You did it. And it’s an immense source of pride for the entire nation. I’m infinitely grateful to you, France is infinitely grateful to you.”
8:36 p.m. GMT+7, November 29, 2024
Here's how much the Notre Dame restoration effort cost
From CNN’s Lauren Said-Moorhouse and Claudia Colliva
Resurrecting Paris’s Notre Dame, one of the world’s most celebrated buildings, from the ravaging flames in 2019 came with a hefty price tag.
It was estimated to cost a whopping 700 million euros ($737 million), according to from Rebuilding Notre Dame de Paris, the public body headed by Philippe Jost, which was tasked with the restorations.
In total, a staggering 846 million euros ($891 million) was raised through donations from 340,000 donors in 150 countries. Jost has previously said that any donated money that isn’t spent on the reconstruction will likely be used to “benefit the cathedral” in other ways.
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