As a parisian, I'm still a bit sad the conservative opinion won and that the roof was rebuilt exactly as it was before the fire.
It wasn't even the original roof! It was rebuilt with little concern over faithfulness to what existed before, not two centuries ago by Viollet le Duc.
After the fire, they were some neat proposals for a glass roof, or some wild ideas like a walkable, vegatalized one. But even without going there, nowadays it seems like old stone is sacred and we can't touch it anymore, ever.
We would never have had the glass pyramid in front of the Louvres or the Eiffel Tower with this mentality.
My cynical take (as an American) is that anything but the previous design would have been subject to politicization and protracted decision-making. Donors would have been more fickle, stakeholder groups would have mushroomed, and reconstruction probably wouldn't have even started yet. From a project management standpoint, the decision to keep it the same was as absolute win.
Yes for sure, I never had much hope for any kind of change because of the reasons you gave. I think it's quite telling of our time how we cling to some idealized idea of the past.
would you apply the same logic to the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Taj Mahal or any of the other treasures of the world’s heritage?
I find interesting that both the example you gave are places for the dead. In contrast Notre Dame is still an active place of worship, and it would shock me less to see change to it. A similar but more secular example would be the glass dome on the Reichstag building in Berlin.
Today's Great Pyramid is much different than what the Great Pyramid looked like when it was first built, according to the TV programs I've seen. There used to be an outer layer of white limestone on the pyramid.
see https://www.livescience.com/how-egyptian-pyramids-originally...
I'd be more impressed if Egypt restored the Great Pyramid to something close to how it looked when first built.
I think I would be fine with a modern roof that respected and blended in to the Gothic style. But the designs I saw were all frankensteins of the elegant Gothic original and a completely unrelated style. The stained glass idea was interesting, but it and several other designs drew the eye's focus to the roof, rather than the main body of the building. It's sadly out of fashion, but I definitely think that architecture needs to blend in to its surroundings, which in the case of the roof is the rest of the building.
(Of course, I'm not French, so my opinion has no weight in the matter)
We would never have had the glass pyramid in front of the Louvres or the Eiffel Tower with this mentality.
I'm really torn on the movement the Pyramid seems to have started. I absolutely hate how obstructionist it is presented at the Louvre - annihilating every sight line and demanding everybody pay attention to what's basically just a covered escalator to some ticket booths.
But on the other hand I'm totally unbothered by the Royal Ontario Museum, or the big symbolic "wave" crashing down on a Japanese colonial building that makes up the shape of Seoul city hall, or the Union of Romanian Architects building.
and I'm in love with the L’École de Musique et de Théâtre in Louviers because it was used to extend and enhance the beauty of the original.
Basically, it can go really wrong or really right.
We know that the previous construction of the Notre-Dame was beautiful, but we don't know what kind of nonsense we could end up with with some really over eager starchitect trying to make a point.
> I'm totally unbothered by the Royal Ontario Museum
I loved the design when I originally saw the architectural drawing and models. The blend of modern with traditional. The way the crystal reflects part of the museum's mission.
That said, the resulting building is hideous when seen at street level. The finish of the structure makes it look like a tornado dropped an oversized aluminum garden shed on the museum, then they never bothered to clean up the mess.
Architects can design some really beautiful structures, but it can go really wrong for reasons other than over eagerness to make a point.
(Or maybe I was bitter about them dropping the free Tuesdays around the same time. Not only was it an affordable night out, but the museum was much more lively with the visitors and special events.)
I'm really glad de didn't go for the monstrosities that where proposed after the fire.
I'm was not against making something new (like what Violet le Duc did), but everything was so lazy and dull I'm really glad they got dismissed.
> We would never have had the glass pyramid in front of the Louvres
This is big misunderstanding: the glass pyramid wasn't built by replacing parts of the Louvre: it was built in place of the parking lot of the ministry of Finances! (And yet, to say it was controversial back then is a massive understatement)
Also Parisians now aren't against new things, we've been numerous to sign a petition to make the Olympic flame aerostat a permanent feature of the city.
As a resident, your opinion trumps mine. But mine is that the Louvres would be much nicer without that pyramid. I don't care for the aesthetics of it, nor the mentality it represents.
>the mentality it represents
Could you share more about what you mean by this?
I mean you're entitled to your opinion but I'm not sure I can really understand this one. Should the Romans build a nice glass dome over the colosseum, maybe rebuild part of it with steel? What about the parthenon? I'm fine with building new stuff in new styles, but would rather we preserve historical works the best we can.
I don't think it's obvious what it means to preserve historical works. A really clear example of my point is the Cerne Abbas Giant, a chalk figure on a hill in England. For a long time the idea was to try to leave it untouched. Adding chalk was seen as something like touching up the mona Lisa. But it was in danger of being lost and if memory serves it was discovered that when it was made people would refresh the chalk regularly. It's inherent to the work that it is maintained.
Let's say this giant is at one end of the spectrum, and the Mona Lisa is at the other. Its subjective where you place cathedrals, but certainly the builders intended it to be an operational building, and throughout its history there have been additions and modifications.
It's a bit different I think because the roof itself was never "preserved the best we can", it's "just" a sort of fantasy roof built at a time when Violet le Duc rebuilt many monuments using his imagination and fantasy with little historical basis.
I can't really say which would be best myself, but the point is since the roof is already the not historical part of the cathedral, it makes little sense to rebuild it exactly in that precise not historical way. Instead, it could keep being the one evolving part of the building.
Notre Dame had multiple accidents over the centuries. Every time something was rebuilt there was a war against changes. And yet many things changed - what you see is not what it looked like before the incident.
What exactly is different this time so that we do not leave a piece of contemporary history in Notre Dame?
Context: French, huge amateur of Middle Ages history.
For one thing, the contemporary architecture of today sucks and the contemporary architecture of that day was actually good. It's very unlikely you would get a good result if you rebuilt the roof today.
> the contemporary architecture of today sucks
Don't be so quick to judge your contemporaries, as today's turd may very well be tomorrow's jewel. The Eiffel Tower was considered a useless monstrosity back then, with many people (including famous authors, artists, and architects) opposing its construction.
Historically the answer was "yes, rebuild the Colosseum with different materials," it's not just a modern thing. The desire to make it more original is stronger now than ever before in many places IMO.
Yeah, you have the right to your opinion too, and you're clearly in the majority so I respect that.
The last time Notre-Dame was rebuilt, by Viollet le Duc, it had been left in ruins for over a century and was redesigned as an idealized version of what it never was. So we are only preserving this version of the past by rebuilding it this way.
Also, a glass dome over the collosem would be hideous, which I think is reason enough not to do it :)
Opening this page lights my phone on fire.
It’s absurd that opening a news website is more intense than running a game with a million baloons on-screen at the same time (without any slowdown).
It's just a reminder to install an ad blocker. Before I saw these comments, I had no idea there are ads on that website.
Damn, that article was interesting, but too hard to read on my phone with the ads jerking it around.
I don't know how people accept to brows the web without an ad blocker, especially on a small phone screen where ads are just invasive…
Since I’ve made pihole a part of my home infrastructure, using this same phone away from home is noticeably much more painful.
On an Android phone, you can use AdGuard DNS-over-TLS server to block ads system-wide even on mobile data. Or install a browser that supports extensions or has a built-in ad blocker.
On an iPhone, you can also use the DNS method, but Safari supports extensions so you can install a proper ad blocker as well.
Installing Firefox + unlock origin does the job without the effort.
there are other ways to block ads