French and foreign tycoons and business leaders have pledged hundreds of millions of euros to restore Notre-Dame cathedral after the roof of the Paris landmark was destroyed by fire and President Emmanuel Macron vowed to rebuild what he called “epicentre of our life”. Mr Macron on Tuesday said he wanted the church, ravaged by fire on Monday night, to be rebuilt within five years. “We will rebuild the cathedral of Notre-Dame and make it even more beautiful than before and I want this to be completed within five years,” he said in a five-minute televised address to the nation. “We can do it, and we will mobilise to do it.”
Some experts had predicted it would take decades to restore the building in central Paris, even with the amounts already pledged for the task by the wealthy and VIPs in France and abroad. On Tuesday the Paris prosecutor said there was no evidence of arson and that investigators were working on the assumption that the blaze was an accident. The investigation would be “long and complex”, he added. Earlier the Paris fire brigade confirmed that the fire had finally been extinguished about 15 hours after it erupted on the roof of the medieval Gothic masterpiece, whose construction began more than 850 years ago.
With France in mourning for its devastated cultural symbol, the main political parties announced a truce and suspended campaigning for the European elections in May. Notre-Dame’s stone structures, including the two famous belfries at the west end of the cathedral, are mostly intact and its large stained-glass rose windows are unbroken, but experts said it could take decades to complete the repairs and rebuilding of a cathedral already much restored through the centuries.
Church officials said treasures and religious relics were mostly saved, but the authorities have yet to assess fully the damage to the great organ and other structures inside the main body of the cathedral. The blazing roof and the soaring flèche — a spire of wood and metal — collapsed into the centre of the building. The Arnault family, owner of luxury group LVMH, pledged €200m to help with the restoration efforts, while the Pinaults, who control luxury conglomerate Kering and family holding company Artemis, promised €100m even before the fire was extinguished. “Faced with such a tragedy, everyone wishes to restore life to this jewel of our heritage,” said François-Henri Pinault, president of Artemis.
Total, the oil and gas company, announced a “special gift” of €100m. Henry Kravis, co-founder of private equity group KKR, and his wife Marie-Josée said they would contribute $10m. Tim Cook, Apple chief executive, said on Twitter that the company would donate to restore Notre-Dame’s “precious heritage for future generations”.
Mr Macron stood in front of the still-burning cathedral on Monday night to announce a national subscription fund to rebuild Notre-Dame. “We were able to build this cathedral more than 800 years ago and over the centuries to enlarge it and improve it, and I tell you very solemnly this evening, this cathedral — we will rebuild it, all together,” Mr Macron said. “Notre-Dame de Paris is our history, our literature, the life of our imagination, the place where we have lived all our great moments, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations. It’s the epicentre of our life,” he said. “It’s a cathedral of all the French even when they have never been to it. This history is ours, and it is burning.”
Mr Macron’s La République en Marche (LREM) party said on Tuesday it had suspended campaigning for the European elections. “This is a moment of profound sadness,” said Nathalie Loiseau, the former Europe minister who heads the party’s list. The far-right Rassemblement National of Marine Le Pen, which is close behind LREM in the opinion polls, announced a 24-hour truce. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the far-left La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party, said he was “not in the mood for politics for at least 24 hours”. Anne Hidalgo, Socialist mayor of Paris, pledged €50m from the city itself and proposed a “large international donors’ conference that could be held at the city hall”.
Attention will now turn to discovering the cause of the blaze — which may have started in the scaffolding or the loft where reconstruction and restoration work was under way — as well as stabilising the ruins and starting reconstruction. “What begins now is to analyse and make an assessment of the extent of the damage inside, if the structure has been affected, and afterwards to begin reconstruction,” said Benjamin Griveaux, a French member of parliament for Mr Macron’s party who resigned as government spokesman to contest the Paris mayoral election next year. “Of course it’s a very strong symbol for French Catholics, but it’s also a symbol for the nation, it’s a symbol for the world, this flamboyant Gothic art of Christianity and in the end it’s the building for which the words ‘world heritage’ were invented.”
Insurance specialists said very little, if any, of the cost of the damage to the cathedral was likely to be covered by insurance. Since 1905, France’s cathedrals have been owned by the state. Robert LeBlanc, chairman of insurance broker Aon’s French business, said: “The assets owned by the state are self-insured by the state. It is an issue for the country and perhaps the world, but not for the insurance market.” A minor exception would be if the fire were found to have been caused by contractors working on the site. Those contractors may have their own liability insurance in place, but according to Mr LeBlanc the size of any payouts on those policies was likely to be tiny in comparison to the cost of the damage.
