Most of the effect must surely be attributed to the conscious choices explicitly designed to make you feel small and pious, right? Though I think for some peopl

Most of the effect must surely be attributed to the conscious choices explicitly designed to make you feel small and pious, right? Though I think for some people a fair bit of the experience comes from thinking it is very old and holy, so if you tell them it's a 1:1 replica they'd be disappointed. Probably the original craftspeople would be hella jealous about reinforce concrete and insist on building some big towering monstrosity that doesn't respect the architecture around it. That was after all what they set out to build, a big hopping temple to god that puts everything around it to shame: give those guys a big budget and reinforced concrete and you have a new flight hazard in the middle of Paris.