France on Friday showed off to the world the gleaming restored interior of Notre Dame cathedral, just over a week before the 850-year-old mediaeval edifice reopens following painstaking restoration after the devastating 2019 fire.

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.