Notre-Dame has just reopened after five years of painstaking reconstruction following the devastating fire of April 2019. For the first time since that night, visitors can step inside the cathedral and feel its silence, its light, and its 860 years of living history.
But even as the scaffolding comes down, a new chapter of controversy is beginning — one that every visitor to Notre-Dame should understand before they walk through those ancient doors.
The Commission That Divided France
In December 2024, French president Emmanuel Macron and the Archbishop of Paris selected artist Claire Tabouret to design six new stained-glass windows for the cathedral's south-side chapels. Tabouret, a 43-year-old French painter now based in Los Angeles, beat out established names including Daniel Buren and Philippe Parreno to win the commission.\n\n
Her brief: to depict the Pentecost — the New Testament moment when the Holy Spirit descended upon Christ's disciples. The committee sought designs that could communicate across cultures, for a cathedral expecting 15 million visitors in its reopening year.
Why Is It Controversial?
The six chapel windows Tabouret will redesign were originally created by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century. Replacing them has drawn fierce opposition: an online petition against the project gathered over 280,000 signatures, France's National Commission for Heritage and Architecture announced unanimous opposition, and the heritage association Sites & Monuments has taken legal action to block the replacements.
Critics argue the move violates the 1964 Venice Charter — international conservation guidelines stating that decorative elements "may only be removed if this is the sole means of ensuring their preservation." Crucially, these windows were not damaged in the 2019 fire. They survived intact, needing only cleaning.
Others see the commission differently. Tabouret's approach pays homage to Viollet-le-Duc's originals: she printed low-resolution images of his windows at large scale, cut them into new shapes to abstract the patterns, and wove his designs into her own — windows within windows. She describes it as "an abstract erosion of shapes that have been simplified," as if the old windows had left a ghostly imprint on the building itself.
What Will Change Inside the Cathedral
The existing Viollet-le-Duc windows will be removed and placed on permanent display in a Paris museum. Tabouret's new windows — depicting apostles and congregants in luminous blues, reds, and yellows — will take their place in 2026, crafted by Atelier Simon-Marq, a glassmaking workshop founded in Reims in 1640.
One technical requirement shaped the entire design: the light streaming through the windows must remain neutral, so that visitors are never walking through a pool of colored shadow. As Tabouret explains: "With stained glass, you create something that is alive, that changes with the time of day and the weather."
What Your Guide Thinks
As a licensed guide-conférencier who has spent years bringing Notre-Dame's stories to life for visitors, I find this debate deeply fascinating — and entirely in keeping with the cathedral's history.
Notre-Dame has always been a living building, not a museum piece. Viollet-le-Duc himself was a radical modernizer in his time: his 19th-century restorations were considered deeply controversial by traditionalists. The spire he built — the one that fell in 2019 — was his own invention, not a medieval original. Today, it is mourned as a heritage icon.
What feels like desecration in one generation often becomes cherished history in the next.
When you visit Notre-Dame with a licensed guide, you won't just see the stones and the windows. You'll understand the layers — medieval, Revolutionary, 19th-century, post-fire — that make this building one of the most complex and contested spaces in the world.
Visit Notre-Dame With a Licensed Guide
Notre-Dame is open again — and this is genuinely a once-in-a-generation moment to witness a cathedral reborn. Whether the new windows are eventually installed or blocked by the courts, the story unfolding inside these walls right now is extraordinary.
Our Notre-Dame guided tour takes a small group through the cathedral with reserved access, in English, on the guided-visit days currently available. Your licensed guide will decode the architecture, the controversy, the restoration — and the stories most visitors never hear.
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Written by a licensed guide-conférencier, certified by the French Ministry of Culture. Route33 Paris offers small-group guided tours of Notre-Dame, the Louvre, and the Palace of Versailles.