Eight bells have been returned to Notre Dame and blessed by its rector as the cathedral prepares to reopen in early December, more than five years after it narrowly escaped complete destruction in a devastating fire.
The 12th-century gothic cathedral was being renovated when the blaze tore through its wooden rafters and lead roof in April 2019, toppling its spire and prompting a desperate fight to save one of the world’s great architectural treasures.
“These bells are the voice of the cathedral, the ones that ring every day,” Philippe Jost, the head of the Rebuilding Notre-Dame de Paris organisation, told Agence France-Presse. Their arrival “lets us look ahead to the rebirth of Notre Dame”, he said.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, initially wanted the cathedral restored for the summer Olympic and Paralympic Games that ended this week, but the scale and complexity of the project mean the official reopening ceremony is now scheduled for 7 December.
The peal of eight bells returned to Notre Dame on Thursday, after being cleaned and renovated in the Normandy foundry that first cast them, belong in the cathedral’s northern belfry, where they would be reinstalled in the coming weeks, Jost said.
Removed last summer to allow the full restoration of Notre Dame’s north tower, they are named after figures from the cathedral’s history and range in size from “Gabriel”, weighing more than 4 tonnes, to “Jean-Marie” at 782 kg.
The bells were cast in 2013 to mark Notre Dame’s 850th anniversary. The cathedral has 20 bells in all, including two huge 13-tonne “bourdons” in the south tower, rung for major occasions such as Easter, Christmas and the death or election of a pope.
The same foundry, Cornille Havard in Villedieu-les-Poêles, cast the “Olympic bell” that was rung by winning athletes in the Stade de France this summer. It will also be hung high in Notre Dame’s rafters in time for the cathedral’s reopening.
Notre Dame’s reconstruction, still in progress, has involved more than 250 companies and hundreds of skilled craftsmen whose work was celebrated in the Games’ opening ceremony. The cathedral was visited by 12-14 million people a year before the fire.
