French president tours medieval cathedral in Paris to view restoration after devastating 2019 fire

The restoration of Paris’s Notre Dame after its partial destruction by fire five years ago will give the world a “shock of hope”, Emmanuel Macron has said as he marked the medieval cathedral’s imminent reopening with a televised walking tour.

Alongside his wife, Brigitte, and the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, the French president was shown around the rebuilt medieval cathedral on Friday morning by Philippe Villeneuve, the chief architect of France’s national monuments.