Paris. Did the Pantheon, the Arc de Triomphe or the Hôtel de la Marine need additional heritage protection? These three Parisian monuments, accompanied by the July Column of the Place de la Bastille and the Chapelle expiatoire of the 8th arrondissement, will soon join the list of national domains, as the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, announced on the social network X on October 11. If this additional layer of legislative protection for already classified monuments appears superfluous, it has received the favorable opinion of the National Commission for Heritage and Architecture. Which could open a new line of revenue in the accounts of their manager, the Center des monuments nationaux (CMN).
Parks and gardens included in the protection perimeter
Article L.621 (-34 to 35) of the LCAP (law relating to freedom of creation, architecture and heritage) relating to national domains is the culmination of a long work to restore a legal reality to the old notion of “national palaces”, which disappeared with the advent of the Third Republic. These benefit from inalienability, imprescriptibility and non-constructibility, making it possible to avoid the dismantling of the parks and gardens of large state-owned residences. Furthermore, the law of July 7, 2016 offers managers of these areas control over the commercial use of the image of the monument: the result of another legal fight led by the Château de Chambord (Loir-et- Cher) against the brewer Kronenbourg.
The list of national domains (pre-established when the law was drafted) was until then composed of monuments associated with their gardens or parks, in accordance with the spirit of the law which evokes conservation with respect for the character “landscaped and ecological” of these goods. For the area of Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), the Louvre and the Tuileries or the Château de Compiègne (Oise), this additional protection protects a forest or landscape area. The five new Parisian additions contrast with the list of sixteen areas established since 2016: “We are in the process of making a corpus that was remarkable lose its coherence,” denounces Julien Lacaze, president of the Sites & Monuments association during a program on the Figaro TV channel.
Pantheon, Paris.
© Camille Gévaudan
These monuments without adjoining gardens are already protected under the terms of historic monuments and the laws which apply to the public domain, and the status of “national domain” does not provide them with any protection from which they did not already benefit. It is therefore in the field of control of the image of the monument that this status gives them a new right: the possibility of authorizing or not the commercial use of their image, and of contractualizing this authorization in the form of a royalty.
Defenders of freedom of expression and creation take a dim view of these additions to the list of national domains: “Our fear is that this expansion will no longer stop, believes Pierre-Yves Beaudouin, former president of Wikimedia France. It must be remembered that the Court of Auditors wanted to extend the system to national museums… If this is the case, the works can also be included. Today there are many exceptions that govern the use of images, but they are vague and could also disappear. » Pierre-Yves Beaudouin raised a priority question of constitutionality in 2017 on the subject after the adoption of CASL.
However, the lawyer Cécile Anger – doctor in public law, specialist in the protection of the image of cultural property and responsible for the brand at the National Public Establishment of Mont-Saint-Michel – recalls that the current legal framework guarantees freedom in the use of the image of monuments: “From the outset, the law was designed not to infringe on freedom of expression. If the commercial use of the image is coupled with a cultural, educational or artistic aim, it remains free. The school book is an example of commercial use which remains free, because it is above all educational. »
Employee of the Château de Chambord during the legal standoff with Kronenbourg who had used the image of the monument in an advertisement for one of its beer brands, Cécile Anger notes the positive impact of this law for the residence of François I : “We clearly saw a before and after “national domain” in Chambord, which allowed us to convince companies and set up partnerships. The idea was to convert users into partners. » The benefits derived from the establishment of this image control, however, remain marginal: the 2023 activity report reported 52,000 euros in revenue for the brand license.
The castle of Chambord.
Rachida Dati’s Parisian diary
For the CMN (which does not wish to communicate before the formalization of the extension by decree), the gains from this authorization on image control could remain anecdotal: “The spirit of the law is not to overvalue and exploit everything, specifies the lawyer, even if this opens up this possibility of generating revenue, and the current context is difficult. »
There remain other gains, political this time because they concern the image of the Minister of Culture who proposed this extension, and who does not hide her ambition to run in the next Parisian municipal elections. These new national domains thus echo the classification as historic monuments of the Eiffel Tower requested by Rachida Dati. Although deemed dispensable by heritage stakeholders, this request allows the minister to engage in a standoff with the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.
