The partial destruction of Notre-Dame by fire and Emmanuel Macron’s immediate response, promising that the cathedral would be rebuilt in record time, prompted a public discussion among experts on the forms of that reconstruction and the politics of heritage conservation (meaning also: the politicisation of heritage). This is the subject matter of the next three articles, written by Salvatore Settis, who signed an open letter to the French president demanding that the Heritage Code be respected; Carlo Pùlisci, an Italian art historian, who has published extensively on cathedrals, churches and the culture of restoration; and Pedro Levi Bismarck, an architect and researcher at the Porto University Faculty of Architecture. We are confronted with three different points of view, encompassing cultural memory and the heritage crisis (Settis), the history and culture of restoration (Pùlisci), and a political critique of conservationist logic and rhetoric (Bismarck).