The Heritage Foundation has revealed the 100 winning departmental sites for the 2024 Heritage Lottery. Among the selected sites that will receive financial aid of up to €300,000, there are almost a quarter of churches and chapels.
Scratch cards at 15 euros and tick cards at 2.20 euros have been on sale since Monday, September 2: 1.83 euros per ticket will be donated to the Fondation du patrimoine for the former and 0.54 for tick cards. The amount of the endowment for each of the sites will be announced at the end of the year. For the 2023 edition, more than 28 million euros had been collected for the benefit of 118 monuments.
Of the 100 winning sites, 22% are religious architectural heritage, 4% are cultural heritage and 2% are castles. Among the most emblematic is the Saint Jean Apôtre church in Régnié-Durette in the Lyon region. The religious building was built by Pierre Bossan, the architect of the famous Fourvière basilica which dominates the Lyon metropolitan area. The grant will enable the municipality to finance the renovation work on the church, whose façade has been damaged by bad weather.
In Normandy, the Saint-Paul church in Granville (Manche), an imposing eclectic-style building built in 1891, is one of the winners. Closed to the public since 2003 for renovation, the Romano-Byzantine building is to be transformed into a cultural third place by 2026: of the 5.6 million euros in funding expected, the mayor of Granville is counting on the “welcome boost” of the Heritage Lottery.
Smaller, lesser-known religious buildings are not left out. Some sites are real heritage gems, such as the Church of the Holy Trinity in Falaise (Calvados), a Gothic architectural masterpiece with a porch dating from the Renaissance. This is also the case for the Gothic church in the commune of Saint-Laurent (Côtes-d’Armor), where there is a 17th-century altarpiece (repairs cost more than a million euros).
The winners also include castles, factories and private homes. In Bézier, the Théâtre du Minotaure (Hérault) will benefit from the funding. Built at the end of the 19th century, it is waiting to be transformed into a cultural center dedicated to the performing arts. In the Paris region, the Villa Stein-de-Monzie (Hauts-de-Seine), a modernist masterpiece by Le Corbusier, is one of the 100 selected projects. The reinforced concrete building (1928) listed as a historic monument in 1975 has been threatened by significant water infiltration since 2015.
Some isolated sites that urgently require work are on the list: the cloister of the former Ursuline convent in Thoissey, which dates from 1666 (Ain), and the Cervone chapel located in the middle of nature at an altitude of over 650 metres (Haute-Corse), which is in danger of collapsing due to bad weather.
The Heritage Lottery has become an important event in the cultural agenda. It is the result of the mission of “safeguarding heritage in danger” entrusted to Stéphane Bern by Emmanuel Macron in 2017. Supported by the Ministry of Culture, the facilitator and the Heritage Foundation select threatened heritage sites throughout the country that can receive financial assistance. Since its creation in 2018, 155 million euros have been used to undertake the renovation of 950 heritage sites. In addition to the 100 winning sites, 18 other so-called “emblematic” sites announced last March will be able to benefit from funding for the 2024 edition.
