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Notre Dame's birthday celebrations marred by row over bells
Notre-Dame's 850th birthday celebrations have hit a false note due to a legal row over four of the cathedral's bells and claims they are destined to be melted down and turned into trinkets made in China.
As part of its anniversary makeover, Paris' grand old dame will receive a new set of nine bells intended to recreate the sound of the 18th-century ones immortalised by Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame.
They will replace four taken down last year, which were so out of tune, one leading expert described them as among "the most dreadful sets of bells in France".
Despite their mediocre quality, the four bells are nonetheless at the centre of a row between Notre Dame and a religious community in Normandy, which last Friday filed for a court order to have them "handed over", claiming they were under imminent of danger of being melted down for scrap.
It is asking for 800,000 euros (£650,000) due to the economic loss of not receiving the bells and a further 150,000 euros for "moral prejudice".
Father Alain Hocquemiller, the prior of the Sainte-Croix de Riaumont institute, said the French state – which owned the bells – had agreed to declassify them and hand them over for a nominal fee to his community, where they will hang in a newly built church.
But he said Father Patrick Jacquin, rector and archpriest at Notre Dame, had refused to part with them.
"I have indubitable proof that his plan was to have them melted down to turn them into little publicity bells," he claimed.
Last month Father Jacquin insisted: "The bells are not for sale, not for destruction, not for melting down."
But Le Figaro cited the director of a foundry that received a tender document to create the souvenir bells, stipulating the melting down would be outsourced to China.
He too is asking for 800,000 euros for "brutally" cutting him out of the tender process and failing to return his designs.
The church expects to receive an extra five million visitors during its jubilee year, meaning 19 million people will admire its gargoyles, twin towers and stunning stained glass rose windows.
Festivities began on Wednesday with a mass using new, improved lighting, a viewing platform and a renovated organ.