San Francisco Frontiers - 'Miracles' and controversies in Notre Dame's renaissance

Ahead of the official reopening of the cathedral on Saturday, AFP looks at some of the key moments:

- The saviours -

Paris firefighters won universal praise for their swift and decisive action on the evening of April 15, 2019, with officers later saying they thought they were only 30 minutes away from seeing the structure collapse.

Battling smoke and the risk of falling debris, they formed a human chain with church officials to evacuate the most precious artifacts and religious treasures, helping preserve most of the cathedral's irreplaceable contents.

Others saw divine intervention in how a copper statue of a rooster that had sat atop the building's incinerated 19th-century spire was found afterwards intact amid the scorched rubble.

Its contents -- three relics, including a small piece of the Crown of Thorns supposedly worn by Jesus before his crucifixion -- also survived, with the battered rooster now on display in a Paris museum.

Inside the cathedral, images the day after the blaze revealed that a giant gold cross on the altar was still standing amid the still smouldering wreckage, a symbol of hope and defiance for many on a dark day for Christians and the country at large.

- Contested design contest -

French President Emmanuel Macron called the fire "an opportunity to come together" but any sense of national unity after the disaster quickly broke down.

His suggestion that an "element of modern architecture" be included in the rebuild drew immediate criticism from conservatives who demanded that the reconstruction be faithful to the last major update by architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc in 1844.

The army general put in charge of the rebuild publicly fell out with the lead architect over the redesign, while entries for an architectural competition to select a new spire resulted in lurid headlines.

One suggestion shown by First Lady Brigitte Macron to then-culture minister Roselyne Bachelot resembled a "phallus with its base surrounded with golden balls," Bachelot wrote in a book.

In the end, a replica of the old spire was built.

Six new stained glass windows are set to be installed featuring work by contemporary artists -- a modest nod to modernity and Macron's original vision.

- Lead role -

Notre Dame's roof and spire were covered by around 400 tonnes of lead, a toxic heavy metal that melted and vaporised with the heat of the fire, with some of it thought to have polluted the surrounding area.

Authorities cleaned nearby schools and advised local residents to wipe surfaces in their homes because of the risk of poisoning.

A health charity joined forces with a union and parents of local schoolchildren to lodge a criminal complaint in 2022 that accused authorities of failing to take every precaution to prevent pollution.

Charges are possible if authorities or contractors are found to have been negligent in protecting the health of residents or workers sent in to decontaminate the site, with an investigating magistrate overseeing a probe.

- Cause unknown -

The chief Paris prosecutor at the time of the fire, Remy Heitz, said shortly after the inferno that he believed that an accident such as an electrical fault or a cigarette butt was the most likely cause.

Some of the workers renovating the roof at the time of the fire were known to have smoked on site, but investigators have never been able to pinpoint the exact starting point.

Speculation about an arson attack has been investigated during five years of forensic analysis, but no evidence was found.

The current chief Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in April that "the closer we have got to the spot the fire started, and the more results of analyses come back, the more weight is lent to the theory of an accident."

- Fee row -

Culture Minister Rachida Dati has proposed that visitors to the restored cathedral pay a five-euro ($5.25) entry ticket, with the funds set to be routed to some 4,000 churches in need of repairs around France.

Charging for entry -- entering Notre Dame was previously free -- would bring the tourist attraction into line with St Paul's cathedral in London or Milan's Duomo.

But senior French church leaders have criticised the idea, with a senior bishop saying churches and cathedrals had "always been places open to all" and making money from visitors would be a "betrayal of their original vocation".

The French state owns Notre Dame and has the final say.

I.Sanders--SFF