France is furious over a few stained-glass windows in Notre-Dame

President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to live forever, represented by modern stained-glass windows in Notre-Dame has been panned – and may be headed for court.

Inside Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral before its December reopening. Picture: Getty Images.

American presidents have libraries to preserve their legacy. The French prefer glass. Francois Mitterrand gave the Louvre its distinctive glass pyramid; Georges Pompidou built an art centre with an unusual glass-tube escalator crawling up its outside; Jacques Chirac opened a Paris art museum with an enormous glass facade.

President Emmanuel Macron’s vision to immortalise himself in glass? Replace some windows in the recently reopened Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. The custodians of French architecture have responded with a resounding “non!”.

His aides say Macron wants to remind future generations of the 2019 blaze that consumed the medieval-era cathedral – and his part leading its restoration. He has approved contemporary designs in yellow, pink and green stained glass for the replacement windows.

The resistance is multilayered. Art historians and architects say the 19th-century windows Macron wants to replace are protected by French law and that replacing them would destroy the harmony of the cathedral’s design.

The backlash is also a reflection of Macron’s sinking popularity in France, where many voters have soured on what they see as a defiant and imperious leadership style.

France’s ascendant far right is berating the president over his window plan, which looks set to be challenged in the courts.

“We have an unpopular president, and everything is held against him,” says Pascal Perrineau, a political-science professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies.

Memes appearing online depict Macron and his wife Brigitte in stained glass. In some, Macron is wearing a crown.

Unfounded rumours have circulated on social media claiming the windows will depict two men kissing. A petition to block Macron’s plans has gathered more than 275,000 signatures.

Macron’s plan involves replacing the towering windows of six side-chapels in the south aisle of Notre-Dame’s nave, with more modern designs.

The cathedral, according to the presidential aides, is an evolving piece of historic architecture. Much like France’s heritage, they say, it isn’t frozen in time, each century bringing its own attributes.

Sketches by French artist Claire Tabouret who has been selected to create new stained glass windows in six chapels of the south aisle of Notre Dame by 2026. Picture: AFP

The French President has staked much of his legacy on rebuilding Notre-Dame, an edifice in central Paris that for centuries has encapsulated the country’s civic and religious life.

Hours after the fire, he pledged to restore – and exceed – the cathedral’s former glory within five years.

The fire destroyed the Gothic spire, along with parts of the cathedral’s majestic roof. Macron proposed an international competition to design replacements for both, which prompted an array of proposals from a diamond-shaped glass roof to a 90m flame-like structure covered in gold leaf.

The chief architect overseeing France’s historic monuments, Philippe Villeneuve, was horrified and told French radio that he would resign rather than allow a contemporary spire.

Eventually, Notre-Dame was rebuilt to its pre-fire blueprint, on deadline and to great acclaim. Macron turned his attention to stained-glass windows as a way to give the building a modern accent and leave his mark. (He can’t stand in the next election.) The windows Macron wants to replace were installed in the 19th century by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, who also designed the cathedral’s gothic spire and added the mythical stone creatures that adorn the balustrade between its two famous bell towers. That makes him almost as entwined with Notre-Dame lore as Victor Hugo’s hunchback Quasimodo.

Preservationists say removing the stained-glass windows, which are protected under the country’s heritage rules, shatters the Venice charter, a set of international guidelines drawn up in 1964 for the conservation and restoration of historic buildings.

Opponents also argue that the new windows would destroy the harmony and disrupt the balance created by Viollet-le-Duc through his simple designs that allow light to stream into the otherwise shadowy nave. The apertures lead the eye to the choir, where Viollet-le-Duc installed other more elaborate, figurative stained glass.

“There is a hierarchy in the richness of stained glass,” says Julien Lacaze, head of Sites & Monuments, France’s oldest national heritage body, who launched the petition to block Macron’s plans.

French President Emmanuel Macron (centre), talks with conservation experts during the restoration of Notre-Dame. Picture: AFP

In July, the country’s National Heritage and Architecture Commission unanimously voted against Macron’s proposal for new windows, in a rare moment of agreement within the government body.

As a result, Pascal Convert, one of the artists in the running to design the stained glass, dropped out of the competition.

“When I read that, I said ‘We’re stopping everything’,” says Convert, 67.

He welled up over what he described as Macron’s transformation of Notre-Dame’s reopening into a United Nations’ summit after the president invited world leaders and tech titans such as Elon Musk to take part. Macron’s decision to go ahead, despite the heritage commission’s vote, reinforced the president’s arrogance over the matter, he says.

“He wants to leave a mark like Mitterrand, but he will never,” Convert says. “Mitterrand was a man of culture – Macron, he’s a banker,” he added, referring to Macron’s former finance career.

Mitterrand faced opposition, too. Critics said the glass pyramid, inaugurated in 1989, clashed with the style and aesthetic of the Louvre. A local official said the museum would be disfigured, and one famous art historian said its courtyard was being treated like an annex of Disneyland.

Macron is forging ahead. Last month, members of an artistic committee set up by the French culture ministry selected French artist Claire Tabouret’s design to grace the window shafts. The aim is to install her new figurative work at the end of next year, for an estimated €4m – which is equivalent to about $6.65m.

Criticism of Macron’s move isn’t entirely framed in France. “He is inserting himself in the history of Notre Dame,” says Claire Smith, a professor of archaeology at Flinders University Australia. It’s “opportunistic and self-aggrandising”, she adds.

The Paris region prefect, the top local civil servant, is now expected to sign off on the move, which Lacaze of Sites & Monuments plans to oppose through the courts.

Opposition politicians have seized on the project, describing it as expensive vandalism, and they have vowed to block it.

“This heritage belongs to the French people of today, yesterday and tomorrow, and a leader can’t sully this priceless heritage on a whim,” far-right leader Marine Le Pen wrote on X last month.

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