Midnight mass will not be held in Notre Dame cathedral for the first time since the French Revolution, as workers launch the delicate task of removing twisted scaffolding from its roof that melted in April’s devastating blaze.

While the race continues to save and restore Paris’ famed 855-year-old Gothic masterpiece, liturgical proceedings have had to be transferred to a temporary new home a mile away at Satine-Germain l’Auxerrois - another Gothic church near the Louvre museum.

Since September, the church has been welcoming Notre Dame’s flock each Sunday.

"This is the first time since the French Revolution that there will be no midnight Mass (at Notre Dame)," cathedral rector Patrick Chauvet told Associated Press.

There was even a Christmas service amid the carnage of World War I, said Mr Chauvet, "because the canons were there and the canons had to celebrate somewhere." During the Second World War, "there was no problem," he added.

To his knowledge it only shut once for Christmas, just after 1789, when anti-Catholic French revolutionaries turned the monument into "a temple of reason."