Seven years after a first attempt, the Heritage Foundation is putting a Heritage Pass back into circulation on the occasion of the European Heritage Days. The idea is not new. In 2019, she joined forces with the start-up Patrivia, with Stéphane Bern as godfather. In a parliamentary response then in its file dedicated to the Bern 2020 Mission, the Ministry of Culture then presented the system as giving access to nearly 400 monuments in France and Belgium, for 79 euros per year for solo and 149 euros for duo. It also indicated that 80% of the entrance price was donated to the place visited and 10% of the margin to the Foundation for the Bern Mission.
Created in 2016 by Maunoir de Massol and Christian Clarke de Dromantin, Patrivia experienced rapid growth. Its platform brought together around 500 sites in 2020, then more than 600. The company had raised 1 million euros in September 2020 and had around ten employees. She seemed to have fully benefited from the covid health crisis. But … “we take a financial risk on the Pass, since we pay 80% of the price of the ticket to the managers when it is used », explained Christian Clarke from Dromantin in the JdA in October 2020.
The model did not hold up. The Paris commercial court opened the simplified judicial liquidation of Patrivia on July 17, 2024, setting the cessation of payments on August 22, 2023. The Heritage Foundation specifies today that it “no longer associated with Patrivia” and that the new Pass was created by her. According to the information communicated to Arts Journalit nevertheless took over part of the know-how developed around the previous system. The industrial property registers also now show the Foundation as the owner of the Pass Patrimoine trademarks registered in 2018.
The new assembly is more directly controlled. To operate the service, in July the Foundation created an SAS, the Société du Pass Patrimoine, 100% owned, with capital of 500,000 euros and chaired by Alexandre Giuglaris, general director of the Foundation. This subsidiary manages subscriptions, ticketing, relations with users and partner sites as well as network development. Stéphane Bern, already sponsor of the first system, is once again supporting the launch.
The Pass currently gives access to more than 500 sites. According to the figures communicated by the Foundation during the press conference on Thursday September 17, the network must quickly approach 600, with a long-term objective of 1,000 locations. It notably includes 83 castles and residences that are members of La Demeure historique, around twenty sites from the Center des monuments nationaux and several large establishments such as Versailles, Chambord, Fontainebleau, Vaux-le-Vicomte and Chantilly. The Foundation announced in June the presence of these main sites in the network.
However, access is not unlimited. The regulation sets the number of annual visits to the same site at four. Establishments may also impose reservations, gauges or quotas of places depending on their capacities and periods of high attendance. For certain large sites, the number of places accessible to the Pass will thus be reduced in high season.
Prices have also been revised. Annual membership of 6 euros to the Foundation included, the cost is 78 euros per year for solo, 114 euros for duo, 138 euros for a family with one adult and up to five children and 174 euros for two adults and five children. The subscription is charged monthly. Excluding membership, which remains optional, the monthly payments are respectively 6, 9, 11 and 14 euros. Patrivia charged, at the launch of 2019, 79 euros for solo and 149 euros for duo.
Operation is based on a mobile application essential for each visit. The subscriber scans a QR code on site and indicates the number of people present. The system validates the Pass and records attendance, which then serves as the basis for site remuneration. The Foundation publicly commits to donating 80% of the ticket price to the places visited, a formula close to that of Patrivia with the same questions about the balance of the system. “Yes there is a financial riskexplains Alexandre Giuglaris, but we have carefully studied the economic models of comparable systems and moreover the Foundation is ready to support the deficits of the SAS for a certain time. But our objective is to generate as many members as possible to discover the sites and make people want to go there. If the financial balance is too complicated, we will see what levers to act on: price, number of visits or via other possible financing”.
The Foundation does not comment on the membership objectives but Guillaume Poitrinal, the president of the Heritage Foundation naturally cited the British National Trust as a reference. This had, at the end of the 2025-2026 financial year, 2.62 million memberships, representing 5.29 million members. But Bénédicte Razafi, the deputy general director, was quick to point out that the National Trust’s membership program dates from the end of the 1960s. Remember that, an important difference with the Heritage Foundation, the National Trust owns or directly manages more than 500 residences, gardens, monuments and natural spaces to which its members have access. The French system must therefore bring together hundreds of independent owners by contract, where the National Trust relies first of all on the heritage of which it itself ensures the conservation and management.
