French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to launch a campaign to rebuild Notre-Dame cathedral in central Paris, even as a devastating fire continued to ravage one of the world’s best known religious and cultural monuments.

“We were able to build this cathedral more than 800 years ago and over the centuries to enlarge it and improve it, and I tell you very solemnly this evening, this cathedral — we will rebuild it, all together,” he said in front of the famous twin towers on the Ile de la Cité in central Paris shortly before midnight on Monday. Mr Macron said a national fund would be launched tomorrow.

“Notre-Dame de Paris is our history, our literature, the life of our imagination, the place where we have lived all our great moments, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, it’s the epicentre of our life,” he said, “It’s a cathedral of all the French even when they have never been to it. This history is ours, and it is burning.”