“It remains so much to do to save our monuments”

Since 2018, nearly a thousand sites have been helped by the Heritage Mission, nicknamed “Mission Bern”. Are you satisfied with this assessment?

I would have bad thanks not to be delighted with the popular success of the heritage lottery! The French have massively participated in the additional prints of the French games and the scratch games. And they will join her heritage days again on September 20 and 21.

At the same time, the Heritage Foundation, which houses this operation, has set up participatory prize pools and, to date, more than 320 million euros have been collected to safeguard these thousand sites which had been reported to us on Missionbern.fr and which benefited from the substantial aid of the Bern mission.

What are the most proud sites?

The strength of this mission is to help not only the religious heritage or the castles, but also the vernacular, industrial and workers’ heritage, that of the 20th century, the houses of illustrious, the gardens, the archaeological sites. We have all chosen and accompanied them, but I confess a little pride of having helped to save the Abbeys of Sénanque and Lagrasse (Aude), the Marcel Proust house at his aunt Léonie in Illiers-Combray (Eure-et-Loir), or the Théâtre des Bleus de Bar-le-Duc.

Do you find that the heritage is in better condition than in 2018?

I note a strong mobilization of the state combined with decisive actions of the Heritage Foundation. But there is so much to do! So many sites suffer from not having been maintained in recent years. Especially since local communities are struggling to assume their catering and climate change accentuates the risks. I see a reason to hope in this incredible awareness, since 2018, of the importance of heritage as a vector of identity and history but also as a doping element for the local economy, especially in rurality, where heritage is a real tourist wealth.

What do you think is the most in -danger heritage category?

It seems to me that it is the rural religious heritage that suffers the most from the drop in public endowments. A site for securing a bell tower or roofing restoration costs around 1.5 million euros. Obviously, depending on the size of the town, it is more or less difficult to bring back funds. But the church of a village is always a strong symbol of its history, of its identity, even if religious practice has changed. It is a real issue for the coming years.

How do you see the rest of your commitment?

We must not let go because we have received for the Bern mission no less than six thousand requests for aid. We will therefore continue by supporting inclusive valuation projects, open to young people looking for meaning. I believe that it is sometimes necessary to assign a new vocation to monumental sites because their usefulness is a guarantee of their survival. In addition, there is the idea of transmission. Children must be brought from an early age to discover and love their local heritage, if we want one day they take over to preserve it.