It is symptomatic of the importance of the position of Notre Dame in the cultural life of Paris and of France that the proposals for its redecoration after the fire that destroyed its roof have caused such an unholy row. It is not only Catholics who are agitated by what some critics have called the Disneyfication of the cathedral. The plans elicited a letter of protest from 100 academics and prominent cultural critics who declared that the renovations aimed to destroy the 19th-century reordering of the interior by Eugène Viollet-le Duc, an architect who also designed the spire; for good measure, they added that plans for video projections on the walls, ambient lighting and moveable benches were “kitsch”.