The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear, but the cathedral had been undergoing intense restoration work which the fire service said could be linked to the blaze.
"We have been dealt a knockout blow," a stricken-looking Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit told reporters.
"If Paris is the Eiffel Tower then France is Notre Dame. It's the entire culture, entire history of France incarnated in this monument," Bernard Lecomte, a writer and specialist in religious history told BFM TV. Macron cancelled a planned national policy speech on recent"Yellow Vest" protests and instead headed to the scene, where he vowed the cathedral would be reborn.
France's billionaire Pinault dynasty immediately pledged 100 million euros for the reconstruction effort.
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