Don't worry, with the funding crisis and air pollution, those stones will darken in a decade with candle smoke and airborne pollution. These airborne pollution destroy rocks and Adobe in most churches. They usually undertake external cleaning in old structures not just churches every decade or so.
By the way, this must be how the first parishioners saw the cathedral. But without the tapestries, colourful murals, or large paintings that should adorn its drab walls. They are not usually meant to be blank and clean like this. Churches commissioned artists in the old days.
They took chemicals and dissolved not grime, but the shadows of people, who over hundreds of years touched its walls and pillars for strength and reassurance from God, wept on its floors in their despair and ecstasy, and fought for its protection with their life. They poured those historical shadows down the drain, those actual people of our past, and with a ceremonial flush, they were gone.
I have some sympathy with your argument, but I have to say that I found the gloom and grime of pre-fire Notre Dame de Paris unappealing, and not at all conducive to prayer or spiritual thoughts, and I'm not sure it attracted many new people to faith either. Yes, some accumulated layers of 'history' have been lost in the clean up, but the new interior, for all its faults, is probably better suited to being a living spiritual centre.
I really appreciate this point of view, since it still remains a house of worship and I didn’t give that role as much weight in my thought process. Thank you!
Per the PBS Nova documentary from 2022, it seemed the cleaning was pretty much unavoidable as they had to a) remove tons of toxic lead dust (from the destruction of the lead roof during the fire) and b) remove salts that leeched from the water-soaked limestone, causing it to flake away. Just sayin’.
The great thing about Paris is that there are dozens of other old churches and cathedrals with all the patina and grime you want a short walk or train away. I think it’s kind of cool that you can now see both, including the gleaming “as it was” edifice.
I don’t think the clean stones and tiles and lustrous paintings are the issue. It is the abrasive lobotomizing cool tone lighting (which very much never existed until recent decades). I hope it is less violent in person because otherwise I’m super sorrowful
Don't worry, with the funding crisis and air pollution, those stones will darken in a decade with candle smoke and airborne pollution. These airborne pollution destroy rocks and Adobe in most churches. They usually undertake external cleaning in old structures not just churches every decade or so.
By the way, this must be how the first parishioners saw the cathedral. But without the tapestries, colourful murals, or large paintings that should adorn its drab walls. They are not usually meant to be blank and clean like this. Churches commissioned artists in the old days.
They took chemicals and dissolved not grime, but the shadows of people, who over hundreds of years touched its walls and pillars for strength and reassurance from God, wept on its floors in their despair and ecstasy, and fought for its protection with their life. They poured those historical shadows down the drain, those actual people of our past, and with a ceremonial flush, they were gone.
I have some sympathy with your argument, but I have to say that I found the gloom and grime of pre-fire Notre Dame de Paris unappealing, and not at all conducive to prayer or spiritual thoughts, and I'm not sure it attracted many new people to faith either. Yes, some accumulated layers of 'history' have been lost in the clean up, but the new interior, for all its faults, is probably better suited to being a living spiritual centre.
I really appreciate this point of view, since it still remains a house of worship and I didn’t give that role as much weight in my thought process. Thank you!
Per the PBS Nova documentary from 2022, it seemed the cleaning was pretty much unavoidable as they had to a) remove tons of toxic lead dust (from the destruction of the lead roof during the fire) and b) remove salts that leeched from the water-soaked limestone, causing it to flake away. Just sayin’.
The great thing about Paris is that there are dozens of other old churches and cathedrals with all the patina and grime you want a short walk or train away. I think it’s kind of cool that you can now see both, including the gleaming “as it was” edifice.
Has an almost Renzo Piano-ish light and airy feel to it
I thought I was the only person who missed the patina of age.
I don’t think the clean stones and tiles and lustrous paintings are the issue. It is the abrasive lobotomizing cool tone lighting (which very much never existed until recent decades). I hope it is less violent in person because otherwise I’m super sorrowful
I am so relieved they didn't turn it into some half-assed brutalist monstrosity that I can live with the stone being cleaned.