The New Murrey and Blue blog

The proposed baptismal font is pictured at the entrance to the nave of Notre Dame (Photo: Guillaume Bardet, Ionna Vautrin and Sylvain Dubuisson)

Oh dear. Here we have the proposals for the “new” Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. The destructive “modern” brigade strikes again. Whatever happened to “blending with and showing sympathy and respect for the magnificent original”? As the excellent article link given above expresses it so succinctly: “I thought they were restoring the Cathedral, not wreckovating it!”

The proposed font looks like a toilet in need of a seat! And do you see that dark blur covering the black-and-white tiled floor? Well, that’s 1,500 chairs!

As for the proposed altar (below), well it looks like the trophy in some award ceremony!

How soulless. I thought our architects were bad enough, but it seems they have the same dolts in France as well. What ARE they thinking? This is the ancient and magnificent Notre Dame in Paris! Can you imagine such an abomination in Westminster Abbey? My pips squeaked enough with Richard III’s plain, ultra-modern tomb in Leicester Cathedral, but that’s one tomb….this awfulness in Paris is a different ball game entirely! The altar simply should NOT look like this! It’s an insult to the cathedral….and to the wonders of France’s past, so much of which is also our past (although not necessarily for agreeable reasons. 🙄)

All I can say to the French authorities is….PLEASE DON’T!