PARIS — After more than five years of frenetic reconstruction work, Notre Dame Cathedral showed its new self to the world Friday, with rebuilt soaring ceilings and creamy good-as-new stonework erasing somber memories of its devastating fire in 2019.

Images broadcast live of a site visit by French President Emmanuel Macron showed the inside of the iconic cathedral as worshippers might have experienced it back in medieval times, its wide, open spaces filled with bright light on a crisp and sunny winter's day that lit up the vibrant colors of the stained glass windows.