French President Emmanuel Macron praised on Friday the more than 1,000 craftspeople who helped rebuild Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral in what he called "the project of the century", five-and-a-half years after fire gutted the Gothic masterpiece.

You’ve achieved what was said to be impossible,” the French president told workers at the Paris monument, which will reopen after the 2019 fire.

Today Notre Dame has been rebuilt. The archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, will ceremonially open its doors for the first time since the fire on December 7th, and hold the first mass the next day. Against the odds,