PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed guests, including Donald Trump, on Saturday at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral for its reopening ceremony, five-and-a-half years after a huge fire brought the Gothic masterpiece close to collapse.
The 860-year-old medieval building has been meticulously restored, with a new spire and rib vaulting, its flying buttresses and carved stone gargoyles returned to their past glory and white stone and gold decorations shining brightly once again.
Getting US President-elect Trump to attend, and organising a meeting between him and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Elysee Palace ahead of the Notre Dame ceremony, was a coup for Macron as he faces a political crisis at home, after parliament ousted his prime minister.
Trump shook hands with Britain’s Prince William and heads of state and government as he made his way to the front of the cathedral. He was due to sit next to Macron in the front row. Earlier, guests had stood and applauded as Zelenskyy walked into the cathedral.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, a close adviser in Trump’s transition team, also attended, as did Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and former French presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.
Earlier, tourists, who still cannot go inside the cathedral, snapped pictures with the restored building in the background as final preparations for the event went on inside.
While the ceremony was initially planned to begin on the forecourt, unusually fierce December winds whipping across the central Paris island, flanked by the River Seine, forced all events inside. Yet the occasion lost none of its splendour. Inside the luminous nave, choirs are singing psalms, and the cathedral’s mighty organ, silent for nearly five years, is thundering to life in a triumphant interplay of melodies.
On the evening of April 15, 2019, Parisians had stood in disbelief and TV viewers worldwide watched in horror as the fire raged through the towering Gothic masterpiece.