Notre Dame Cathedral unveils its new interior 5 years after devastating fire

PARIS (AP) — After more than five years of frenetic, but sometimes interrupted, reconstruction work, Notre Dame Cathedral showed itself anew to the world Friday, with rebuilt soaring ceilings and creamy good-as-new stonework erasing somber memories of its devastating fire in 2019.

Images broadcast live of a site visit by French President Emmanuel Macron showed the inside of the iconic cathedral as worshippers might have experienced it in previous centuries, its wide, open spaces filled with bright light on a crisp and sunny winter’s day that lit up the vibrant colors of the stained glass windows.

Outside, the monument is still a construction site, with scaffolding and cranes. But the renovated interior — shown in its full glory Friday for the first time before the public is allowed back in on Dec. 8 — proved to be breathtaking.

Stonemasons fixed the ripped-open ceilings

Gone are the gaping holes that the blaze tore into the vaulted ceilings, leaving charred piles of debris. New stonework has been carefully pieced together to repair and fill the wounds that had left the cathedral's insides exposed to the elements. Delicate golden angels look on from the centerpiece of one of the rebuilt ceilings, seeming to fly again above the transept.

The cathedral's bright, cream-colored limestone walls look brand new, cleaned not only of dust from the fire but also of grime that had accumulated for centuries.

The cathedral attracted millions of worshippers and visitors annually before the April 15, 2019, fire forced its closure and turned the monument in the heart of Paris into a no-go zone except to artisans, architects and others mobilized for the reconstruction.

Macron entered via the cathedral’s giant and intricately carved front doors and stared up at the ceilings in wonder. He was accompanied by his wife, Brigitte, the archbishop of Paris and others.

Techniques new and old deployed

Powerful vacuum cleaners were used to first remove toxic dust released when the fire melted the cathedral's lead roofs.

Fine layers of latex were then sprayed onto the surfaces and removed a few days later, taking dirt away with them from the stones' pores, nooks and crevices. In all, 42,000 square meters of stonework were cleaned and decontaminated — an area equivalent to roughly six soccer pitches.

“It feels like it was built yesterday, like it’s just been born, even though Notre Dame is very old," said stonemason Adrien Willeme, who worked on the reconstruction. "Because it’s been so carefully restored and cleaned, it looks really extraordinary.”

Cleaning gels were also used on some walls that had been painted, removing many years of accumulated dirt and revealing their bright colors once again.

Carpenters worked by hand like their medieval counterparts as they hewed giant oak beams to rebuild the roof and spire that collapsed like a flaming spear into the inferno. The beams show the marks of the carpenters' handiwork, with dents made on the woodwork by their hand axes.

Some 2,000 oak trees were felled to rebuild roof frameworks so dense and intricate that they are nicknamed “the forest.”

It's a sneak peek ahead of the reopening

Macron's visit kicked off a series of events ushering in the reopening of the 12th-century Gothic masterpiece. At the end of his tour, the president addressed hundreds of workers gathered inside the cathedral and thanked them for their labors on what he called the "building site of the century.”

“The shock of the reopening will, I want to believe, be as powerful as the one of the fire. But it will be a shock of hope,” he said. “The inferno of Notre Dame was a wound for the nation. And you were its remedy."

Macron will return on Dec. 7 to deliver another address and will attend the consecration of the new altar during a solemn Mass the following day.

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Associated Press video journalist Marine Lesprit contributed to this report.