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While I totally agree with your sentiment, I'm not sure how I'd feel about tearing the whole thing down and building something brand new in its place. Interesti

While I totally agree with your sentiment, I'm not sure how I'd feel about tearing the whole thing down and building something brand new in its place. Interesting to ponder why that is.

johnchristopher 8y ago
Maybe because you suspect that this brand new something wouldn't necessarily be built to travel through centuries.
- basch 8y ago
  Thats sort of how I feel about it being done in 5 years. Take your time, make it a big deal, its ok if you spend a lifetime on it. People who visit will get to say they saw it being built, while it was under construction. When it is finally unveiled at the end the story can be "this was xxxx years in the works."
crististm 8y ago
I guess this is because you need to have a reason to build the thing, a reason congruent with the aspirations and the will of the people living there
GuiA 8y ago
Victor Hugo did a great job at reviving interest for the cathedral with his book. If it hadn’t been for him, it is entirely possible it would have been destroyed instead of restored in the mid 1800s, and you wouldn’t care much about it :)
- worldsayshi 8y ago
  There's an interesting point here somewhere about how a story being of greater cultural impact than the icon that it choose to portray. And yet most people would probably say that the icon itself, the cathedral, is of much greater cultural significance than the story. Or perhaps the two can't really be separated.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  On that note, around that time (during the revolutionary period, 1793), Liège (Belgium) disassembled their cathedral brick by brick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lambert%27s_Cathedral,_Li%C3%A8ge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lambert%27s_Cathedral,_L... A 3D rendering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTkk2P0KabA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTkk2P0KabA A picture, google image has more, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sint-Lambertuskathedraal_Curtius.jpg?uselang=fr https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sint-Lambertuskathed... And as you point it out we don't think much about it these days (for better or worst).
  - baud147258 8y ago
    That link is broken https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Sint-Lambertuskathedraal_Curtius.jpg/800px-Sint-Lambertuskathedraal_Curtius.jpgimg.XnM-T2426wQ https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Si... I think it's this one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Sint-Lambertuskathedraal_Curtius.jpg/800px-Sint-Lambertuskathedraal_Curtius.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Si...
    - johnchristopher 8y ago
      Thanks, I tried to be clever. The post now links to the media page instead of the picture.
  - titanix2 8y ago
    Really interesting. The Wikipedia page in French is more complete and give more context.
zip1234 8y ago
In Rome I can think of one church (San Clemente Basilica) that was built on top of a pagan temple, which then had another church built on top of it, which then had the current church built on top of it. You can in fact tour all levels of it. Much of ancient Rome lies at a lower level than the current city, so those buildings are now basements or buried. In many cases that is what happened, not wholesale knocking down of the old buildings.
- misiti3780 8y ago
  That church is pretty cool and and pretty hidden, up on the hill behind the colosseum right ?
  - zip1234 8y ago
    Yes, it is very close but still not completely overwhelmed with tourists as the Colosseum is.
- musingsole 8y ago
  I've heard of buildings built on top of others before. Is it commonly because the buildings have actually sunk into the ground or are they somehow pushed?
  - dmitriid 8y ago
    It’s apparently called sediment accumulation. If you can suffer through Quora, some answers there: - https://www.quora.com/How-were-ancient-cities-built-on-top-of-older-ones/answer/Dimitra-Triantafyllidou https://www.quora.com/How-were-ancient-cities-built-on-top-o... - https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-ground-level-of-Ancient-Rome-so-much-lower-than-the-modern-ground-level/answer/Guus-Arnouts https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-ground-level-of-Ancient-Rom...
- iguy 8y ago
  Here's a great blog post about San Clemente https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/ https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/ (in which Freud battles his vertigo...)
Haga 8y ago
As we grow older we realize that nothing lasts forever but change. Gone is your childhood home, gone your school, gone the people who defined it. it's nice to have something around that seemingly lasts forever like the earth and sky. Makes us feel home, when home is long lost too time.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  Presumably this iteration of Notre Dame was built by old men. Something must have changed at the societal level to make tearing down a 700 year old cathedral to make a new one possible in the 13th century, but seem unconscionable in the 21st.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    A vast development in building capabilities and craft I think is the answer. I don't think we have more crafting capabilities now when it comes to architecture, we can build bigger, higher, etc.. I don't think we can build with a greater sense of human devotion to ones craft and it's use to glorify God. Buildings now show incredible material science, technological development; but rarely the decades of learning of human craft directly applied to materials. I think if we were going from rough-hewn to well-faced stonework, opaque windows or simple slits to translucent radiant glasswork, from flat ceilings to intricate vaulting, etc.. that we too would make that leap. We are so much richer, we can afford to keep old stuff, hoard it even, and still have resources a'plenty to keep warm, feed everyone, and build glorious buildings.
- aswanson 8y ago
  Been having those thoughts revisiting my old elementary school with my kid. Every teacher and staff member when I went there is gone, but in my memory there is a snapshot of that part of my life...frozen in time. Comparing that snapshot in time & space to what it is now is jarring. Nothing is permanent but change.
- naravara 8y ago
  >Gone is your childhood home, gone your school, gone the people who defined it. it's nice to have something around that seemingly lasts forever like the earth and sky. Makes us feel home, when home is long lost to time. What makes monuments like Notre Dame or the pyramids special is that they DO imbue this sense of continuity. Everything else in our lives comes and goes, but a few things we as a society come together collectively to say "This is special and worth preserving." There is a special feeling of connection one gets from that sense of unity across time. These are the things that give us a sense of shared history and a shared future destiny. And it has the effect of simultaneously making you feel individually small and insignificant, but also important and part of something grand. The first time I visited Paris I remember one of my most dominant thoughts was that nothing like this will ever be built again. There is so much in the art and architecture that, by modern standards, would be deemed wasteful and extravagant and a suboptimal use of resources. We don't value aesthetics in the same way. So when these things go, they're gone forever. Even if remade they will only ever be an imitation of a way of thinking and a way of life that has gone extinct. They won't even serve to remind us of those old ways because the gestalt you get from layering generations of use and the peculiar artifacts of the material culture that created it will be gone. That's why people mourn. It's not just about the building, but the fact that the building anchors them to a sense of tradition and continuity. And it's not the first time these things happened. It was mentioned that before it was a Christian church it was a temple to Jupiter in that location. Removing the old pagan monuments was a conscious effort to FORCE just such a break from the past. To say the old pagan ways are over and to sever any sense of continuity with that old culture and their old Gods. I'm sure it was just as troubling or traumatic then too. We still have some collected myths and stories from the Romans and the Norse and so on, but a lot of these were written by Christian converts who were sad that the stories they heard on their grandparents' knees were going to disappear. They may have converted, but they felt like this was something important that needed to be preserved.
Dirlewanger 8y ago
I think part of it would be intent. I don't know that much about its creation, but I'm guessing the Notre Dame was planned out to survive a long time, much longer than a wooden structure of similar size. It was also built as a place of worship and of similar religious use. It wasn't something that wasn't going to be discarded if it wasn't "performing well". I say all of this in contrast to e.g. tearing down the Notre Dame and putting up some real estate development that rents out stalls to merchants. Say the economy takes a hit and the owners start considering selling the land, only for the structure to be torn down again. My point is that it'd be a tragic misuse if the structure fell into the hands of those solely seeking a profit from the structure/land.
worldsayshi 8y ago
I think there's a lot to say about this. I feel that today's Zeitgeist doesn't favour radical renewal. It feels like it's quite anxious and conservative as a whole. We're unsure about the future and what direction to go as a species. And as often before we look for comfort in our ancestors.
- jakecopp 8y ago
  I find this a fascinating point. In my understanding it's in complete contrast to the modernist architectural movement with its ideals of urban renewal. Anyone have any other thoughts on this current Zeitgeist?
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Personally, I think a lot of the current Zeitgeist is rooted in what Alvin Toffler called Future Shock[1]. Given that he wrote his book in the late 60's / early 70's, and considering how much technological change in particular has accelerated since then, I do believe that most of us are walking about in a "future shock" state. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock
petre 8y ago
It hasn't burned to the ground or suffered structural damage to the walls, so no one in their right mind is going to tear the whole thing down. They'll restore it.

While I totally agree with your sentiment, I'm not sure how I'd feel about tearing the whole thing down and building something brand new in its place. Interesting to ponder why that is.

johnchristopher 8y ago

Maybe because you suspect that this brand new something wouldn't necessarily be built to travel through centuries.

basch 8y ago
Thats sort of how I feel about it being done in 5 years. Take your time, make it a big deal, its ok if you spend a lifetime on it. People who visit will get to say they saw it being built, while it was under construction. When it is finally unveiled at the end the story can be "this was xxxx years in the works."

crististm 8y ago

I guess this is because you need to have a reason to build the thing, a reason congruent with the aspirations and the will of the people living there

GuiA 8y ago

Victor Hugo did a great job at reviving interest for the cathedral with his book. If it hadn’t been for him, it is entirely possible it would have been destroyed instead of restored in the mid 1800s, and you wouldn’t care much about it :)

worldsayshi 8y ago
There's an interesting point here somewhere about how a story being of greater cultural impact than the icon that it choose to portray. And yet most people would probably say that the icon itself, the cathedral, is of much greater cultural significance than the story. Or perhaps the two can't really be separated.
johnchristopher 8y ago
On that note, around that time (during the revolutionary period, 1793), Liège (Belgium) disassembled their cathedral brick by brick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lambert%27s_Cathedral,_Li%C3%A8ge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lambert%27s_Cathedral,_L... A 3D rendering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTkk2P0KabA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTkk2P0KabA A picture, google image has more, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sint-Lambertuskathedraal_Curtius.jpg?uselang=fr https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sint-Lambertuskathed... And as you point it out we don't think much about it these days (for better or worst).
- baud147258 8y ago
  That link is broken https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Sint-Lambertuskathedraal_Curtius.jpg/800px-Sint-Lambertuskathedraal_Curtius.jpgimg.XnM-T2426wQ https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Si... I think it's this one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Sint-Lambertuskathedraal_Curtius.jpg/800px-Sint-Lambertuskathedraal_Curtius.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Si...
  - johnchristopher 8y ago
    Thanks, I tried to be clever. The post now links to the media page instead of the picture.
- titanix2 8y ago
  Really interesting. The Wikipedia page in French is more complete and give more context.

zip1234 8y ago

In Rome I can think of one church (San Clemente Basilica) that was built on top of a pagan temple, which then had another church built on top of it, which then had the current church built on top of it. You can in fact tour all levels of it. Much of ancient Rome lies at a lower level than the current city, so those buildings are now basements or buried. In many cases that is what happened, not wholesale knocking down of the old buildings.

misiti3780 8y ago
That church is pretty cool and and pretty hidden, up on the hill behind the colosseum right ?
- zip1234 8y ago
  Yes, it is very close but still not completely overwhelmed with tourists as the Colosseum is.
musingsole 8y ago
I've heard of buildings built on top of others before. Is it commonly because the buildings have actually sunk into the ground or are they somehow pushed?
- dmitriid 8y ago
  It’s apparently called sediment accumulation. If you can suffer through Quora, some answers there: - https://www.quora.com/How-were-ancient-cities-built-on-top-of-older-ones/answer/Dimitra-Triantafyllidou https://www.quora.com/How-were-ancient-cities-built-on-top-o... - https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-ground-level-of-Ancient-Rome-so-much-lower-than-the-modern-ground-level/answer/Guus-Arnouts https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-ground-level-of-Ancient-Rom...
iguy 8y ago
Here's a great blog post about San Clemente https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/ https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/ (in which Freud battles his vertigo...)

Haga 8y ago

As we grow older we realize that nothing lasts forever but change. Gone is your childhood home, gone your school, gone the people who defined it. it's nice to have something around that seemingly lasts forever like the earth and sky. Makes us feel home, when home is long lost too time.

village-idiot 8y ago
Presumably this iteration of Notre Dame was built by old men. Something must have changed at the societal level to make tearing down a 700 year old cathedral to make a new one possible in the 13th century, but seem unconscionable in the 21st.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  A vast development in building capabilities and craft I think is the answer. I don't think we have more crafting capabilities now when it comes to architecture, we can build bigger, higher, etc.. I don't think we can build with a greater sense of human devotion to ones craft and it's use to glorify God. Buildings now show incredible material science, technological development; but rarely the decades of learning of human craft directly applied to materials. I think if we were going from rough-hewn to well-faced stonework, opaque windows or simple slits to translucent radiant glasswork, from flat ceilings to intricate vaulting, etc.. that we too would make that leap. We are so much richer, we can afford to keep old stuff, hoard it even, and still have resources a'plenty to keep warm, feed everyone, and build glorious buildings.
aswanson 8y ago
Been having those thoughts revisiting my old elementary school with my kid. Every teacher and staff member when I went there is gone, but in my memory there is a snapshot of that part of my life...frozen in time. Comparing that snapshot in time & space to what it is now is jarring. Nothing is permanent but change.
naravara 8y ago
>Gone is your childhood home, gone your school, gone the people who defined it. it's nice to have something around that seemingly lasts forever like the earth and sky. Makes us feel home, when home is long lost to time. What makes monuments like Notre Dame or the pyramids special is that they DO imbue this sense of continuity. Everything else in our lives comes and goes, but a few things we as a society come together collectively to say "This is special and worth preserving." There is a special feeling of connection one gets from that sense of unity across time. These are the things that give us a sense of shared history and a shared future destiny. And it has the effect of simultaneously making you feel individually small and insignificant, but also important and part of something grand. The first time I visited Paris I remember one of my most dominant thoughts was that nothing like this will ever be built again. There is so much in the art and architecture that, by modern standards, would be deemed wasteful and extravagant and a suboptimal use of resources. We don't value aesthetics in the same way. So when these things go, they're gone forever. Even if remade they will only ever be an imitation of a way of thinking and a way of life that has gone extinct. They won't even serve to remind us of those old ways because the gestalt you get from layering generations of use and the peculiar artifacts of the material culture that created it will be gone. That's why people mourn. It's not just about the building, but the fact that the building anchors them to a sense of tradition and continuity. And it's not the first time these things happened. It was mentioned that before it was a Christian church it was a temple to Jupiter in that location. Removing the old pagan monuments was a conscious effort to FORCE just such a break from the past. To say the old pagan ways are over and to sever any sense of continuity with that old culture and their old Gods. I'm sure it was just as troubling or traumatic then too. We still have some collected myths and stories from the Romans and the Norse and so on, but a lot of these were written by Christian converts who were sad that the stories they heard on their grandparents' knees were going to disappear. They may have converted, but they felt like this was something important that needed to be preserved.

Dirlewanger 8y ago

I think part of it would be intent. I don't know that much about its creation, but I'm guessing the Notre Dame was planned out to survive a long time, much longer than a wooden structure of similar size. It was also built as a place of worship and of similar religious use. It wasn't something that wasn't going to be discarded if it wasn't "performing well". I say all of this in contrast to e.g. tearing down the Notre Dame and putting up some real estate development that rents out stalls to merchants. Say the economy takes a hit and the owners start considering selling the land, only for the structure to be torn down again. My point is that it'd be a tragic misuse if the structure fell into the hands of those solely seeking a profit from the structure/land.

worldsayshi 8y ago

I think there's a lot to say about this. I feel that today's Zeitgeist doesn't favour radical renewal. It feels like it's quite anxious and conservative as a whole. We're unsure about the future and what direction to go as a species. And as often before we look for comfort in our ancestors.

jakecopp 8y ago
I find this a fascinating point. In my understanding it's in complete contrast to the modernist architectural movement with its ideals of urban renewal. Anyone have any other thoughts on this current Zeitgeist?
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Personally, I think a lot of the current Zeitgeist is rooted in what Alvin Toffler called Future Shock[1]. Given that he wrote his book in the late 60's / early 70's, and considering how much technological change in particular has accelerated since then, I do believe that most of us are walking about in a "future shock" state. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Shock

petre 8y ago

It hasn't burned to the ground or suffered structural damage to the walls, so no one in their right mind is going to tear the whole thing down. They'll restore it.