The restoration work of the cathedral is almost finished after five years.
The bells of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris rang out together on Friday for the first time since the fire that devastated this historic monument in 2019, reports TASR according to the AFP agency.
The sound of the eight bells in Notre Dame’s north bell tower was heard a month before the cathedral is due to reopen to the public after five years of restoration work following a fire.
“It is a wonderful, significant and symbolic step,” said the head of the government agency overseeing the restoration of the cathedral, Philippe Jost.
The heaviest bell weighs more than four tons
The heaviest of the bells, called “Gabriel”, weighs more than four tons, and the lightest, “Jean-Marie”, weighs 800 kilograms. The voice of each of the bells sounded one after the other on Friday morning at 9:30 a.m. local time (10:30 a.m. CET) until finally their voices merged in harmony, reports AFP.
The fire of April 15, 2019 shocked not only France, but also a large part of the civilized world, causing significant damage to the medieval cathedral, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
At the time, French President Emmanuel Macron quickly set an ambitious goal to restore Notre Dame within five years and make it “even more beautiful” than before, AFP reminds.
Roughly 250 companies and hundreds of experts were mobilized for the reconstruction worth hundreds of millions of euros.
