A bell, middle, that Olympic medalists rang on the Paris Video games, is seen earlier than being put in in Notre Dame Cathedral, forward of the monument’s grandiose reopening following an enormous hearth and five-year reconstruction effort, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024 in Paris.
Christophe Ena/AP
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Christophe Ena/AP
PARIS — Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral, whose historic bells had been silenced following 2019’s devastating hearth, will quickly echo once more with contemporary chimes.
On Thursday, the Gothic landmark took supply of three new bells, together with one which was used within the metropolis’s Stade de France stadium throughout this yr’s Paris Olympic Video games.
The Olympic bell, a present from the Paris 2024 organizing committee, might be put in alongside two smaller bells, named Chiara and Carlos, above the altar the place they are going to be rung throughout Mass, officers mentioned.
Their arrival forward of Notre Dame’s reopening on Dec. 8 marks a milestone within the painstaking restoration and modernization of the 861-year-old cathedral, made well-known world wide by Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, rector of Notre Dame, expressed gratitude for the bells’ arrival throughout a ceremony.
“What a joy it is,” he mentioned. “At the most important moment of the Mass these bells will ring, just as they did when the victor of a competition could celebrate their victory.”
In the course of the Paris 2024 Video games, the enduring Olympic bell was rung by every monitor and discipline winner.
It bears the mark “Paris 2024,” whereas the 2 others are adorned with a spherical image combining the picture of Notre Dame’s iconic rosary window with a monstrance, a non secular vessel central to the cathedral’s altar.
A bell is seen earlier than its set up in Notre-Dame cathedral, forward of the monument’s grandiose reopening following an enormous hearth and five-year reconstruction effort, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024 in Paris. (AP Picture/Christophe Ena)
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Christophe Ena/AP
Crafted by the famend Cornille Havard foundry, in Villedieu-les-Poêles, Normandy, the bells embody France’s distinguished bell-making custom.
In a solemn second, Dumas consecrated the bells with holy water and a tree department.
Standing on the sq. exterior the cathedral, he and Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, struck the bells with a picket mallet to mark the event.
“What a powerful symbol it is to see this second life given to the Paris 2024 bell, which brought us so many emotions during these Games,” Estanguet mentioned.
The bells substitute three that had been beforehand positioned close to Notre Dame’s Nineteenth-century spire, which dramatically collapsed in the course of the hearth which ripped by way of the cathedral’s rafters and roof.
The brand new bells might be positioned in a special location inside the cathedral, officers mentioned, the place their return will add to the soundscape of Notre Dame’s day by day life.
They be part of the eight historic bells from the cathedral’s north tower that had been reinstalled in September after being cleaned and renovated.
These bells—Gabriel, Anne-Geneviève, Denis, Marcel, Étienne, Benoît-Joseph, Maurice, and Jean-Marie—had been initially forged in 2013 for Notre Dame’s 850th anniversary.
The cathedral’s two bigger bells stay intact on the south tower and had been unaffected by the blaze, officers added.
The reconstruction of Notre Dame has concerned greater than 250 firms and lots of of expert craftsmen.
The Olympic bell is not the one image of previous assembly new in Notre-Dame’s evolving restoration.
Perched atop the newly designed spire, a golden rooster, reimagined by chief architect Philippe Villeneuve, marks a mix of the cathedral’s historic spirit with a contemporary contact.
The weathervane, which resembles a phoenix with flames licking its wings, is described as a testomony to hope and revival.
