Nine new bells weighing 23 tons go on display in Notre Dame, Paris, before they are installed in the towers in time for Easter.![]()
People attend a ceremony to inaugurate nine new church bells at Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral in Paris
Nine newly cast bells have gone on display at Notre Dame, the Paris cathedral, weeks before they are hoisted into the two great towers in time for Easter.
The new bells, weighing 23 tons in total and named after saints and prominent Catholics, have been cast to mark the 850th anniversary of the Cathedral's founding in 1163. They replace bells which had become discordant, and will first be heard as they peal out on March 23, in time for Palm Sunday and Easter week.
Eight of the nine new bells were cast in a foundry in the Normandy town of Villedieu-les-Poeles. The ninth - a "bourdon," or Great Bell, named Marie - was cast in the Netherlands and then sent to Normandy to join the others.
On Thursday they were sent by a slow-moving convoy of flatbed lorries to the French capital.
The old bells, which dated from different periods throughout Notre Dame's history, were out of tune with each other and with the one surviving Great Bell, called Emmanuel, which has hung in the cathedral since the 17th century. It will remain.
"The idea of this project was to recreate the old bells of Notre Dame in terms of power, in terms of tune, which means that there will be again 10 bells ringing into the cathedral as it used to be in the Middle Ages and up until the French Revolution," said Paul Bergamo, president of the Cornille-Havard Foundry in Villedieu-les-Poeles.
Nine newly cast bells have gone on display at Notre Dame, the Paris cathedral, weeks before they are hoisted into the two great towers in time for Easter.
The new bells, weighing 23 tons in total and named after saints and prominent Catholics, have been cast to mark the 850th anniversary of the Cathedral's founding in 1163. They replace bells which had become discordant, and will first be heard as they peal out on March 23, in time for Palm Sunday and Easter week.
Eight of the nine new bells were cast in a foundry in the Normandy town of Villedieu-les-Poeles. The ninth - a "bourdon," or Great Bell, named Marie - was cast in the Netherlands and then sent to Normandy to join the others.
On Thursday they were sent by a slow-moving convoy of flatbed lorries to the French capital.
The old bells, which dated from different periods throughout Notre Dame's history, were out of tune with each other and with the one surviving Great Bell, called Emmanuel, which has hung in the cathedral since the 17th century. It will remain.
"The idea of this project was to recreate the old bells of Notre Dame in terms of power, in terms of tune, which means that there will be again 10 bells ringing into the cathedral as it used to be in the Middle Ages and up until the French Revolution," said Paul Bergamo, president of the Cornille-Havard Foundry in Villedieu-les-Poeles.