The Archdiocese of Paris rejected proposals by France’s Culture Minister Rachida Dati to charge tourists visiting the restored Notre-Dame du Paris to fund protection of religious heritage.
Dati suggested France should copy other countries and charge admission to the cathedral, due to reopen on 8 December for the first time since a fire in 2019.
With a €5 fee, Notre-Dame could raise €75 million annually that “would save all the churches of Paris and France. It would be a magnificent symbol”, she said, as Prime Minister Michel Barnier struggled to put together a national budget.
“Pilgrims and visitors have never been distinguished: services are celebrated during visits and visits continue during services,” an archdiocesan statement said in response. Charging tourists would “deprive pilgrims and visitors of the communion among all that is the very essence of the place”.
It also said the law said churches could “unconditionally welcome” everyone, while the cathedral building had little space for facilities to “distinguish between visitors, pilgrims and the faithful”. Under the 1905 separation of Church and State, religious buildings are public property but assigned to their communities to manage.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau supported Dati’s idea, saying it was worth protecting France’s historic religious buildings “whether one believes in heaven or not”.
Dati also proposed charging non-EU tourists higher fees for secular sites in France, as another means of funding their preservation.
“The French are not meant to pay for everything, all by themselves,” she said, though she admitted this would be “a real break in the pricing policy of our cultural establishments”.
“Is it normal, for example, for a French visitor to pay the same price to enter the Louvre as a Brazilian or Chinese visitor?” she asked. The Louvre museum received 8.9 million visitors last year, 68 per cent from outside France. The largest foreign contingent was from the United States (13 per cent), followed by Italy (seven per cent) and the UK (five per cent).
Dati gave no other details for the Notre-Dame proposal but said extra fees for other sites could be introduced in 2026.
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