Notre Dame looks ghostly inside after the fire. But it's still standing.

(Image credit: Philippe Wojazer/AFP/Getty Images)

published 16 April 2019

Fire officials in Paris declared the inferno that gutted Notre Dame cathedral on Monday "completely extinguished" by midmorning Tuesday, and authorities and experts began assessing the extent of the damage and the building's structural integrity. On Monday night, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed that France would rebuild Notre Dame, and by Tuesday morning, more than $300 million euros ($340 million) had been pledged toward that effort.

Notre Dame's roof and spire were destroyed in the fire, but the 400 firefighters who extinguished the blaze also saved priceless religious relics and works of art, not to mention the 850-year-old Gothic cathedral's stone walls and two main towers. French Culture Minister Franck Riester said early Tuesday that Notre Dame's storied organ had survived the fire, and at least one of its famous rose windows appeared to be intact.

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Approaching Notre Dame early Tuesday, "from certain angles, it was almost possible to look head-on at the front of church and see its centuries-old rose windows and carved statues and imagine all was intact," The Washington Post reports. "But to stray to any other angle made clear the devastation. The roof was burned away, and there was an aching absence where the spire had been. Char and smoke marks licked the walls out of rose-round window frames where once there was stained glass. Water gushed in arcs onto wooden roof beams that once seemed eternal and now looked like used matchsticks."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.