So what bug has stung Rachida Dati less than a month before the grand reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris on December 7? In a interview at Figaro this October 24the Minister of Culture suggests “setting up a symbolic price for all tourist visits to Notre-Dame and devoting this money entirely to a major plan to safeguard religious heritage”. Adding: “With just 5 euros per visitor, we would raise 75 million euros per year. Thus, Notre-Dame de Paris would save all the churches of Paris and France. It would be a magnificent symbol.”
On paper, the idea may seem attractive. Don’t you pay in Italy to admire most of the cathedrals and churches? Don’t we pay to visit remarkable cultural places and museums throughout France? But Notre-Dame de Paris is not a monument like any other, it is first and foremost a cathedral. Wanting to introduce a paid ticket is a provocation against the clergy and comes up against at least three obstacles.
The first is political and concerns relations between Church and State. The 1905 law separating the two provides that the cathedrals are State property, but above all, in its article 17 that “the visit to the buildings and the exhibition of classified movable objects will be public: they will not give rise to any tax or fee.” If it is obviously not impossible to revise the 1905 law, the State takes the risk of creating a major dispute with the Church which has always opposed this idea. Already in 2017, through the voice of Stéphane Bern, the public authorities had expressed a similar idea. Immediately, the Conference of Bishops of France made its disagreement known. Regularly, during the five years since the fire, the diocese of Paris has reminded that Notre-Dame de Paris is first and foremost a place of worship and should not become a museum. And when he announced that he was setting up a ticket office for the reopening, he immediately clarified that it was a question of better regulating the flow of visitors but in no case a payment.
The bad role for the Archbishop of Paris
The second difficulty is technical and makes it difficult to apply Rachida Dati’s idea. Because if the State is the owner of Notre-Dame de Paris, the Church is the beneficiary. Above all, she is the “sole” assignee. Clearly, it alone has the right to act within its walls. Therefore, the very establishment of a ticket office seems complex: who would take care of it? Where? Who would receive the funds collected in this way? Without even mentioning the idea of only charging “visitors” and not believers. It is difficult to imagine how to distinguish the former from the latter.
Finally, the sum generated by this ticketing – 75 million euros – would be welcome given the needs of France’s religious heritage. In September 2023, the specific collection launched by the State via the Heritage Foundation had the objective of 15 million euros to save 100 buildings. However, in April 2024, less than three million euros had been collected. And the ministry mentioned 5,000 buildings requiring urgent intervention. That is to say a need of more than 700 million euros. By suggesting a levy on entries to Notre-Dame de Paris, Rachida Dati hopes to compensate for the weaknesses of her budget, but also the lack of maintenance by municipalities (large or small) on these buildings – maintenance which is their responsibility but which does not not part of the “compulsory charges”.
For Rachida Dati, but also for the Elysée, the proposal of paid entry to access the Paris cathedral has other advantages. In particular, that of reminding the Church that only the voluntarism of Emmanuel Macron allowed the reopening of Notre-Dame in such a short time, barely more than five years since the fire of April 2019. And that many fellow citizens contributed to the 840 million euros collected for reconstruction. A reminder which, for those in power, comes at the right time as tensions multiply around the organization of the reopening ceremony. Emmanuel Macron wishes to speak inside the cathedral when the diocese considers that this is hardly appropriate. Just as the Church refuses to be formally “returned the keys” of the cathedral, since it considers that it has never formally left the premises. By indicating that she had proposed “a simple idea to the Archbishop of Paris”, Rachida Dati forced the latter to say “no”. A bad role that he could have done without.
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