No wonder they have kept it a “secret”…
Ugh . . . what have they done to the altar?? Leave it to Macron & Co. to destroy a national treasure. I’m sure glad I got to visit the cathedral years ago, before it was burned.
From a quick glance at the article, it seems they haven’t destroyed the exterior. That’s something to be thankful for.
Looks like a rocking stone.
It might be clever for a dining table design, especially for couples with small children. Or maybe a stone with a slot in it for a sword.
What say @vardas3 Dr. Farrell?
Looks like the alter for sacrifice or maybe my imagination is just running way again.
I say it is more modernist warfare and uglification of beauty, tradition, and transcendence, and what one expects in the post Vatican Two lurch… er… church… And yes, from that viewpoint, very Masonic-God-in-generalish
Oh yeah, an alter upon a ziggurat in the midst of dialectical black and white and rows of two pillars in full view.
Am I seeing six pillars on both sides or seven?
Looks Mayan. Horrid!
I rather thought you might have an opinion.
It could still do a very good job of being rented out for upscale family picnics. Are we absolutely sure they didn’t install a swimming( reflecting) pool on the 2nd floor??
At least it will be inaugurated, I mean consecrated, by Donald Trump and M. Macròn.
Thank you so much for sharing this!! 
Many thanks for sharing this, Rui!
Your post sparked some lively conversations, here, among friends enjoying pizza at a table in Canada!
And those conversations, then inspired us to poke around what others have been saying:
-
An article on Life Site news about President Trump’s plans to attend the reopening ceremony (and suggesting that the pope declined to participate).
-
An NBC video of interviews of some of the artisans (some of whom were American carpenters) who worked on the restoration, including also restoration of the bells and organ, under the direction of a military general.
-
An AP interview of a journalist who didn’t care for some of the modernizations.
From viewing these articles/videos, we came away with a few impressions:
a) the amount of work to restore the damage was MASSIVE, and the military general who coordinated the work was talented
b) there used to be a black and white checkerboard floor in the original cathedral
c) a few selected of the older (undamaged) stained glass windows were removed and replaced with modern ones
d) some people love the clean and bright interior (it used to be grey and dull, charred by centuries of smoke and pollution)
e) other people have mixed feelings about some of the modernizations, and feel that politicians should not be as influential in setting the style
Our impression, also having read accounts of other cathedrals that have burned and been restored – nothing that is restored will ever be like its original. Not having seen the cathedral after the restoration, we don’t have any kind of sense of the “affekten” at play in the new interior, and how that compares with the previous “affketen”. We did find the AP reporter’s impressions interesting, that she felt a difference in her own feelings when she was in the old versus the restored cathedral.
(Dr. Farrell’s ideas on “Affektenlehre” in his books are very interesting. My sense is that building architecture is like musical sound architecture in terms of “affekts” on the psyche of a person receiving the energy from that entity…be it a physical creation or a musical creation…)
I have seen vids of people on the roof just before the fire started !
Some people have expressed amazement at the miraculous (5-year) warp speed of a restoration of that nature – which brings to mind a few questions: how long would it take it take to plan such a complex restoration project, let alone find the appropriately-skilled people to do the work, versus the implementation of the project (which required the leadership of a military general). Reminds one of similar questions raised during the covid operation – how a commercial injection and other products (e.g., masks, hand sanitizers, plastic screens, floor arrows, etc.) happened to be waiting in the wings, ready to be implemented…