There must be a deep truth expressed in this tremendous continuity. Paris is articulated into uncountable axes. Even modernism can be integrated into this historical chain. The theories of modernism were wrong. There is more involved than just functions and needs and their satisfactions.
Architecture creates a spatial organisation.
With their monumentality, such buildings create history. They provide anchors for identification with certain ideas and times. Maybe modernism and post-modernism have greatly neglected this fact. The European doggedness in preserving historical centres, contrary to all modern architectural commodity theories, finally proves that these conservative cores of high values are an urbanistic constant. For many, the nuclear demarcations of Europe, the cathedrals and churches in towns and cities, have lost nothing from what has been described in the case of the temple of Ancient Egypt.