Notre-Dame needs a makeover, and hopes you can help

Paris

BROKEN gargoyles and fallen balustrades replaced by plastic pipes and wooden planks. Flying buttresses darkened by pollution and eroded by rainwater. Pinnacles propped up by beams and held together with straps.

Little of that deterioration is immediately visible to the millions of awe-struck tourists who visit the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris every year, many of them too busy admiring the intricately sculpted front to notice the wear and tear.

But on a recent afternoon, André Finot, the cathedral's spokesman, pointed out the decay. One patch of limestone crumbled at a finger's touch.

"Everywhere the stone is eroded, and the more the wind blows, the more all of these little pieces keep falling," said Mr Finot, gingerly stepping …