France’s dazzling heritage in stone has proved both beautiful and burdensome for the state, and well beyond its means to maintain.
PARIS — Even though it was one of France’s most iconic sites, Notre-Dame cathedral suffered years of neglect and struggled to find the millions it needed for urgent renovations before it was ravaged by fire. But France is replete with tens of thousands of other historic monuments, both beautiful and burdensome, including 86 other cathedrals that are all at risk.
Such an inventory makes the fire at Notre-Dame, though no doubt a singular catastrophe, one that could be repeated in ways large and small all over a country with a dazzling heritage that has proved well beyond the means of the state to maintain.
The list of disasters or near disasters by fire at the country’s historic monuments, in the last 25 years, is long — and includes notably the flames that engulfed the 17th-century parliament building in Brittany in 1994.
“We’re keeping up our heritage in a minimal manner,” said Alexandre Gady, a leading art historian at the Sorbonne. “There’s just not enough money.”
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Faced with its treasure trove of monuments, the French state has essentially thrown up its hands and hoped for the best.
It spends roughly $360 million a year on these historic monuments, known in France as the patrimony, or patrimoine, barely a 10th of the Culture Ministry budget, and down 15 percent between 2010 and 2018.
That budget is up again in 2019, roughly to previous levels, thanks to a special outlay for a Renaissance chateau President Emmanuel Macron took an interest in, Villers-Cotterêts, which had fallen into ruin.
Some $20 to $30 million of the monuments budget is parceled out to its cathedrals, a paltry $260,000 to $400,000 apiece. Roughly half the money goes to local governments to spend on buildings under their purview, which are about half the total.
Most of the rest are in private hands, and owners get substantial tax breaks for restoration work. Only about 4 percent of the buildings are owned by the state outright, as Notre Dame is.
The result is patchy at best. Every visitor to France has experienced the village church with the alluring 14th-century wall paintings, inaccessible because there is no money to hire someone to watch over them. Or the church that is perilously open and thoroughly deserted, exposing its priceless treasures to all and sundry.
