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.

The bells of Notre Dame are chiming again, but scaffolding still clinging to the cathedral’s exterior is puzzling some Parisians, who question whether its grand post-blaze reopening is more symbolic than substantive.