A cathedral, Notre Dame, Paris? Oh, come on! That would be too simple. A
historic monument, then? A national symbol? An exemplary construction site?
Meh. So, what is it, you might ask, slightly annoyed. The answer seems both
simple and trivial to me: Notre Dame, the new Notre Dame, will primarily be a
math problem, the kind teachers used to give for school exams. It’s about
barrels filling up, faucets dripping, and bathtubs emptying.
Next year, 15 million visitors could show up at its doors. That’s about as
many as visit the Forbidden City, the most visited monument in the world, which
sprawls across 15 hectares, or 37 acres —30
times the size of our charming little Parisian church. Ignore the severely
limited space. Forget the extremely cramped circulation area. Do a quick
calculation: 15 million means about 40,000 people a day. Assuming ten hours of
daily opening, that’s 4,000 people an hour, or roughly 60 entries per minute.
Does the term crowd bother you? Call them curious onlookers or
visitors, pilgrims or tourists, worshipers or customers—the arithmetic doesn’t
change. To avoid bottlenecks, one person will need to leave Notre Dame every
second. Count one, two, three, sneeze, take an extra selfie… and there’s
already chaos. The moment the public regains access to the building, those
tasked with welcoming them will have one obsession: getting these people out as
fast as they got them in.
This is why we shouldn’t charge for access. Sure, it would be a gold mine,
even at five euros a ticket, as France’s
cultural minister Rachida Dati suggested. If the price ranges between 10 and 30 euros, like at Milan’s Duomo, or
creeps toward the Sagrada Familia’s 40 euros—how could one resist? Twenty euros ($21) on average? That’s
three billion euros ($3.1 billion) over ten years. Enough to renovate plenty of monuments when
rebuilding Notre Dame only cost 700 million… Yet this materialistic calculation
should persuade us to reject the idea. The commercial pressure would become so
intense, the economic logic so overwhelming, that nothing of the building’s
true purpose—worship, reflection, prayer, pilgrimage, or faith
exploration—could be preserved.
Rebuilding, in the end, was the easy part. Breathing life into it will be
much harder. This touches on the very challenge and paradox of overtourism. A
little foot traffic brings life. But beyond a certain threshold, things spiral
out of control—like when cruise ships taller than church spires undermine the
foundations of Venice itself. In Basque villages or Alpine valleys, locals can
no longer afford to live. In Santorini, the sunset “spot” draws so many
influencers that you can’t see a thing—their dense crowd blocks the horizon.
I’m reminded of French author Jean Cazalbou’s short story, “The Fountain of Halberds.” It tells of a monument attracting more and more visitors to the narrow streets of a medieval town until the city council reached the most logical decision: demolishing the fountain to make room for tour buses. Rest assured, I’m not suggesting we tear down Notre Dame right after its restoration…
Jean-Pierre Denis is a veteran journalist
and editor specializing in culture and religion.
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