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Fire Hits Cathedral in French City of Nantes

The images of smoke pouring out of the Gothic building were a painful reminder of the fire that mauled Notre-Dame in Paris, but the authorities said the damage would not be as serious.

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The authorities in Nantes, France, said that a fire that broke out at the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul was being investigated as arson.CreditCredit...Stephane Mahe/Reuters

A fire broke out inside the cathedral of the western French city of Nantes in the early hours of Saturday, but the authorities quickly said there was no comparison with the blaze that engulfed Notre-Dame in Paris last year, despite ominous images of flames and smoke coming from the building.

Over 100 firefighters were sent to the cathedral in Nantes after they were alerted shortly before 8 a.m., but the “violent fire” was controlled in hours, according to Gen. Laurent Ferlay, the head of the firefighters in the Loire Atlantique area, which includes the city.

“It is not a scenario like at Notre-Dame de Paris,” General Ferlay told reporters, adding that the fire, though contained, was not yet extinguished. “The roof hasn’t been hit,” he noted.

General Ferlay said that the fire had broken out near the organ of the cathedral and had destroyed the instrument entirely. The authorities have opened an arson investigation; three separate starting points for the blaze have been detected.

Father François Renaud, who is in charge of the cathedral, told Agence-France Presse that stained-glass windows from the 16th century had burst in the fire, and that the platform on which the organ rested was in danger of collapsing. Images from inside the cathedral showed charred wooden debris and stones shattered on its floor.

The Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, a Gothic building in Nantes that was built across four centuries and completed in 1891, was previously suffered a fire in 1972, which destroyed much of its wooden framework. It was replaced with a structure in concrete, which General Ferlay said had helped limit the damage this time.

French television stations broadcast images of thick smoke pouring out of a giant stained-glass window, a painful reminder for many of the blaze that devastated Notre-Dame and sent its spire crashing through the roof, bringing the Paris landmark to the verge of collapse.

“After Notre-Dame, the Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul cathedral, in the heart of Nantes, is in flames,” President Emmanuel Macron of France wrote on Twitter. “Support for our firefighters who take all risks to save this Gothic jewel of the city.”

Prime Minister Jean Castex traveled to Nantes on Saturday afternoon, visiting the damaged cathedral and praising the firefighters who responded to the fire. “How are you? Not too tired?” he asked some of them. “Bravo.”

The fire in the French capital last year started in the attic, ravaging the famed latticework of ancient timbers known as “the forest,” before spreading to the towers, and it left three jagged openings in the vaulted ceiling of Notre-Dame, one of Europe’s most visited monuments.

Workers are continuing to delicately remove about 40,000 pieces of twisted scaffolding from the precarious stone structure that were melted in the Notre-Dame fire.

The blaze changed the face of Paris and prompted a nationwide reckoning over the state of France’s 86 cathedrals and tens of thousands of other monuments, which historians had long warned were being neglected.

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Notre-Dame last month. Workers are continuing to delicately remove about 40,000 pieces of twisted scaffolding from the stone structure that were melted in the fire at the Paris cathedral last year.Credit...Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The origin of the Notre-Dame fire is still unknown, but investigators have focused on the possibility of a short-circuit in the electrified bells of the spire, or in elevators that had been set up among scaffolding. Cigarette butts, which were found on the scaffolding, have also been suspected.

Mr. Macron, who had vowed to rebuild the cathedral within five years, said this month that the cathedral had to be restored in a way that would be “as true as possible,” to its “complete, coherent and last known state.”

In Nantes, a city of about 300,000 people near the Atlantic coast, it took 13 years to reopen St. Peter and St. Paul after a fire tore through the cathedral’s roof in 1972. Father Hubert Champenois, the rector of Nantes, who witnessed the fire decades ago, told the French television channel BFMTV on Saturday that the blaze on Saturday did not look as devastating.

Johanna Rolland, the mayor of Nantes, said on French television that she had been allowed inside the cathedral with firefighters and saw reasons for optimism, while acknowledging the trauma. “The damages are real, but they are localized,” she said, adding that it was “a sad day for Nantes and its people.”

Elian Peltier is a reporter in the London bureau of The New York Times, focusing on breaking news. More about Elian Peltier

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Cathedral Fire in France Stirs Memories of Notre-Dame. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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