Notre Dame, in one month, will welcome back visitors and worshippers after a sometimes challenging restoration to return to its former glory, the great Paris cathedral badly damaged by a devastating 2019 fire.
On the evening of April 19, 2019, Parisians and the world watched in horror as flames ravaged the world heritage landmark and then toppled its spire.
For some at the time, the apocalyptic images of the blaze felt like the end of the more than 850-year history of Notre Dame or even a symbol of the collapse of Western civilization itself.
But declaring France to be a "nation of builders," President Emmanuel Macron set the ambitious goal to rebuild Notre Dame within five years and make it "even more beautiful" than before.
French authorities are happy that the promise has largely been kept with a weekend of ceremonies to mark the reopening from Dec. 7-8, even if not in time for the world to share the moment during this summer's Olympic Games in Paris.
Some 250 companies and hundreds of experts were mobilized for a restoration costing hundreds of millions of euros in what was dubbed the "building site of the century."
Increased visitors
Delays were forced by the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for a clean-up of lead spread by the fire.
The French general who was responsible for overseeing the restoration, Jean-Louis Georgelin, died in August 2023 in an accident in the Pyrenees and was replaced by his right-hand man, Philippe Jost.
But the 19th-century gothic spire has now been resurrected with an exact copy of the original, the stained windows have regained their color, the walls shining after fire stains cleaned and a restored organ ready to thunder out again.
Unseen to visitors is a new mechanism to protect against any future fires, a discreet system of pipes ready to release millions of water droplets in case of a new disaster.
The opening is not even the end of the mammoth restoration: part of the lead roofing base still needs to be finished and the statues of the apostles and saints, removed before the fire to allow for their restoration, will be reinstalled in the first half of 2025.
Notre Dame, which welcomed 12 million visitors in 2017, expects to receive an even higher figure of "14 to 15 million" after the reopening, according to the church authorities.
Archbishop of Paris Laurent Ulrich told Agence France-Presse - (AFP) last month that Macron will on Saturday, Dec. 7 give an address inside Notre Dame to mark the reopening.
It is extremely unusual for a political leader to be allowed to address the faithful inside a Catholic religious building. France is by its constitution a secular country with a strict division between church and state.
The next day, Sunday, Dec. 8, will see the first mass and consecration of the new altar, he added.
There have been reports of tensions between the church and the Elysee over how the ceremony should proceed.
Macron in December said he had invited Pope Francis to the reopening of the cathedral, but the head of the Catholic church announced in September, to the surprise of some observers, that he would not be coming.
Critical time for church
The French Catholic church has in recent years been rocked by a succession of sexual abuse allegations against clerics, including most recently the monk known as Abbe Pierre, who became a household name for his aid to the destitute.
An independent inquiry found that 216,000 minors had been abused by clergy over the past seven decades.
French Catholicism has been in significant decline for several decades.
According to official statistics published in 2023, 29% of the population aged 18 to 59 declare themselves Catholic.
The restoration cost a total of nearly 700 million euros (more than $750 million at today's rate).
It was financed from 846 million euros in donations from 150 countries in an unprecedented surge of solidarity.
The remaining money is being reallocated to urgent restorations of the exteriors of the cathedral on the east side.
French ministers have also floated the idea of charging tourists an entrance fee to the site. However, the Paris diocese said free admission was an important principle to maintain.
Over five years, the investigation into what caused the fire has been ongoing, with initial findings backing an accidental cause such as a short circuit, a welder's torch, or a cigarette.