Almost four years after a fire gutted the over-850-year-old Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the monument is slowly being pieced back together. With a reopening date set for December 2024, workers are carving statues and cranes are lifting stones to repair the vaulted ceilings. And about 320 kilometres away, at an industrial wood workshop in rural eastern France, carpenters are assembling what will become the cathedral’s new spire.

Axar.az reports that Philippe Villeneuve, a chief architect of Notre Dame’s reconstruction stated this.

Workers on Thursday were climbing up ladders and carefully assembling the spire’s future base, an X-shaped structure made of thick oak beams, measuring about 15 metres on its longest side.

“I often think of it as the nuclear core of the construction site,” Villeneuve said. “There’s absolutely no room for mistakes.”