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France has announced an international competition to find an architect to redesign the spire of Notre Dame, following a devastating fire on Monday evening.

The French Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe, announced the contest to reporters on Wednesday, saying that the design should be “a spire suited to the techniques and challenges of our time”.

“The international competition will allow us to ask the question of whether we should even recreate the spire as it was conceived by Viollet-le-Duc,” Philippe said. “Or, as is often the case in the evolution of heritage, whether we should endow Notre Dame with a new spire. This is obviously a huge challenge, a historic responsibility.”

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Although there have been no estimates made as to how much rebuilding the spire may cost, €880 million (about £762 million) has already been raised for the cause, much of it coming from huge donations from some of France’s richest billionaires.

The French President Emmanuel Macron commented that they hoped to have the work completed by the time Paris hosts the Summer Olympics in 2024, meaning it would need to be done within five years, a timeline that many experts believe won’t be possible.

“We’ll rebuild Notre Dame even more beautifully and I want it to be completed in five years, we can do it,” he said on Tuesday.

From: Harper’s BAZAAR UK