Just a couple of days ago, Severine Vilbert strolled by Notre Dame with her eldest daughter on a chilly but brilliantly sunny day. The blossoms were out and the cathedral glistened in the light.
"We were looking at Notre Dame and saying, ‘Wow, it's such a beautiful monument, how proud we were to be Parisian and live in this beautiful city,'" Vilbert recalled, not bothering to fight back tears. "And then, it was like a nightmare for us."
On Tuesday, Vilbert retraced her footsteps in a transformed Paris. A few drops of rain fell from a slate grey sky, as she joined thousands of Parisians and tourists paying a vigil of sorts to a smoking-but-still-cherished icon.
The inferno that raced through the more than 850-year-old cathedral Monday night destroyed most of the roof. Its 90-meter (295-foot) spire collapsed in the blaze, causing selfie-snapping onlookers to gasp.
Investigators are scouring for clues from the fire that they consider likely, for the moment, accidental.
"I'm a Christian. I'm a Catholic. I think it's really terrible about what's happened," George Castro, a French-Colombian, said of the blaze that occurred just a week before Easter. "It's really, really sad."
But amazingly, no lives have been lost and priceless treasures were saved, along with Notre Dame's stunning rose window. Reports quoted experts assessing the building as structurally sound.
The fire is the latest assault on one of the world's most beautiful cities. Over the past few years, Paris has weathered two massive terrorist attacks that bookended 2015, and most recently the yellow vest crisis that defaced some of its most prestigious landmarks and deeply divided French citizens.
Topic: Tourists Flock to See Crippled 'Mother' of France (Read 13628 times)
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August 03, 2016, 06:34:56 AM