Although the project has not been formally announced, Father Gilles Drouin provided an overview during an online conference in May for the general secretariat of Catholic education in France, which has been posted on YouTube. Last Friday, the British conservative newspaper The Telegraph denounced the reimagined Notre Dame as a “politically correct Disneyland” and an “experimental showroom”.1

“It’s Notre Dame de Paris turned into Disneyland,” claims the Paris-based architect Maurice Culot, the author of several books on religious architecture in the 19th century. “It does not make any sense,” he tells The Art Newspaper. “We are rebuilding the cathedral and the spire as it was, with ancient materials like stone, wood and lead, and now we’ll have a theme park for foreign tourists inside. Why wasn’t the design entrusted to the same architects to maintain unity between the inside and outside of the building?” Pointing out that churches and cathedrals are owned by the state in France, he asks: “How could a priest choose, on his own, the interior decoration of a cathedral that belongs to the universal heritage of humanity and is being rebuilt with donations coming from all over the world?”

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• 1. Father Drouin, the director of the liturgical institute of Paris, said during the presentation that he was chosen two years ago by the archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, to “revamp the inner space” of the cathedral. He proposes a sound-and-light trail along the side chapels, providing a “fruitful dialogue with contemporary art”. He plans to replace “the straw chairs, which occupy 80% of the space” with luminous “mobile benches”. Most of these could be removed during weekdays to leave more room for visitors. Altars in the chapels would also be displaced and only four confessionals maintained on the ground floor. Drouin explained that Notre Dame “was not adapted to cope with large numbers of tourists”, which rose to 12 million before the cathedral was devastated by fire in 2019. Visitors “come for different reasons, most of them from non-Christian or post-Christian cultures”. So the chapels, some of which could be renamed after Asia, Africa and other themes, should display “multiple offerings” such as light projections of Bible quotes in foreign languages including Chinese. Drouin showed designs featuring a stained-glass window and a chapel wall covered in a contemporary abstract painting of clouds.