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.

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.

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.

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 :)

That cathedral is property of the state and the Catholic church is only allowed to use it for its office, to be clear.

Private (owned by the church) churches, synagogues or mosques are not under that statute. But then they have to pay the maintenance themselves.

Notre Dame is paid by public taxes so its fate and purpose are decided by the French public, not by the church, although of course its opinion is taken into account.

It's the same reason many churches in other countries and up transformed into apartments, libraries or destroyed altogether when the Church can't pay for them anymore. It's not a question of "respect" for a religion or another.

Why try to frame me as some rabid anti-christian?

I respect the opinion of the majority which clearly wanted to keep it as it was, I am merely expressing a slight disappointment over the final decision.

Also, why would adding more modern features to the church be disrespectful to christians??

And no, the church has been rebuilt many times since the middle ages. Each time differently, reflecting the era.

>Put it this way: you put your walkable gardens on top of christian cathedrals, I build up tennis courts on top of mosques and swimming pool on top of synagogues.

Sure, why not? They're just buildings, and that sounds like fun.

And I'm pretty sure that as far as the Christian faith is concerned, one isn't supposed to put value in the temporal universe or its constructs, and a grand cathedral is as meaningless to God as a mud hut.

> Do you think a walkable garden at the top of a cathedral would be respectful of the christian faith or do you think only other religions deserve respect?

Personally I find nothing disrespectful about putting a walkable garden on top of a cathedral.

> Put it this way: you put your walkable gardens on top of christian cathedrals, I build up tennis courts on top of mosques and swimming pools on top of synagogues.

I don't understand what you compare a hypothetical walkable garden on a cathedral to a tennis court on a mosque or a swimming pool on a synagogue. I think it better to compare a walkable garden on a cathedral to a walkable garden on a mosque or a walkable garden on a synagogue. Whether that is disrespectful is up to the individual.