Gutted in a blaze four years ago, Notre-Dame is on course to be fully restored by 2024
By Hugh Schofield BBC News, Paris
When President Macron said they would get Notre-Dame de Paris up and running inside just five years, everyone laughed.
They’re not laughing now.
The promise to save the devastated cathedral in so short a space of time seemed back then like a typical bit of Macronian bombast.
But on the fourth anniversary of the conflagration, the prospect of a Notre-Dame refitted by the end of next year no longer seems so absurd.
“We made an undertaking in front of the whole world that we would have our cathedral finished inside five years,” says Jean-Louis Georgelin, the retired army general in charge of reconstruction.
“Our reputation is at stake. That is why we must unite all our knowledge, our efforts, our savoir-faire to achieve this goal.”