Pledges pour in to help rebuild Notre Dame after devastating fire
Pledges to donate millions of euros in cash and materials poured in Tuesday in the aftermath of a massive fire at the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, which firefighters were still fighting to extinguish more than 12 hours after it started.
President Emmanuel Macron has vowed the emblematic church will be rebuilt after its spire and roof collapsed on Monday night in a blaze thought to be linked to extensive renovation work.
French billionaire Bernard Arnault announced on Tuesday that he and the LVMH luxury conglomerate he controls would give €200m for the reconstruction efforts.
The pledge came after Arnault’s crosstown rival Kering, the fashion group founded by fellow billionaire Francois Pinault, offered €100m to help “completely rebuild Notre-Dame”.
The privately run French Heritage Foundation has already launched a call for donations to help restore a “symbol of French history and culture”.
Valerie Pecresse, president of the Ile-de-France region comprising the greater Paris region, said it would provide €10m.
The head of a French lumber company told FranceInfo radio that it was ready to offer the best oak beams available to rebuild the intricate lattice that supported the now-destroyed roof, known as the “Forest”.
“The work will surely take years, decades even, but it will require thousands of cubic metres of wood. We’ll have to find the best specimens, with large diameters,” Sylvain Charlois of the Charlois group in Murlin, central France, told the radio.
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo proposed organising an international donor conference to coordinate the pledges to restore the gothic architectural masterpiece.
The UN’s cultural agency Unesco has also promised to stand “at France’s side” to restore the site, which it declared a world heritage site in 1991.
You may also like…Huge fire rips through roof of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris
A major fire broke out at the landmark Notre Dame Cathedral in central Paris on Monday afternoon, sending flames and huge clouds of grey smoke billowing into the sky, the fire service said.
The flames and smoke plumed from the spire and roof of the gothic cathedral, visited by millions of people a year, where renovations are currently underway…Read more here
Source: businesslive
