a petition launched against the replacement of six stained glass windows in the cathedral

On Friday December 8, Emmanuel Macron, visiting Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral, announced the launch of a competition for the creation of contemporary stained glass windows for the cathedral. An announcement which immediately caused heritage defenders to react. A petition launched on December 10 has already collected more than 80,000 signatures, according to the Change.org website. The competition concerns the creation of “six contemporary stained glass windows” which must bear “the mark of the 21st century” in the cathedral.

The signatories demand the pure and simple abandonment of this project to create contemporary stained glass windows for six of the seven chapels on the south aisle of Notre-Dame. The reason is simple: to install these new stained glass windows, it is necessary to remove the existing ones designed by Eugène Viollet-Le-Duc in the 19th century. Drop them off even though they withstood the fire of April 15, 2019 and have just been cleaned as part of the restoration project.

The authors of the petition argue that the stained glass windows of Viollet-Le-Duc form a coherent whole and that they are classified as a Historic Monument in the same way as the cathedral. The announcement by Emmanuel Macron of their transfer to the future museum of the work of Notre-Dame which will be installed in the Hôtel-Dieu does not calm the controversy. Heritage defenders recall that the thousands of donors, who enabled the rebirth of the cathedral, wanted it restored to its historic state.