Paris. The Court of Auditors is not the only public authority concerned about the “investment wall” that is looming for heritage. The Senate is also concerned about the significant maintenance expenses that the Center of National Monuments (CMN) must incur in the coming years. The CMN estimates the current investment work on several of the 110 sites it manages at 270 million euros. But although the public establishment has its finances in rather good condition, it will not be able to pay for these current investments without increased aid from the State, which seems compromised for several years due to the State’s public deficits and needs in other heritage sites.
The senators point out that only four sites generate profits to compensate for the deficits of the others 106. These are, in order, the Arc de Triomphe, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Mont Saint-Michel and the Pantheon and undoubtedly in 2025 the towers of Notre-Dame which will reopen soon. The revenues from these sites, and in general from Parisian sites, allow the CMN to be half self-financing. The senators also recommend increasing entry tickets to Parisian sites in order to have more revenue.
More importantly, they recommend suspending major projects and the integration of new sites into the scope for several years. In recent years, the CMN has in fact integrated two large pieces – the Hôtel de la Marine and Villers-Cotterêts, the cost of which alone is equivalent to what the CMN has spent since 2017 on its other sites. The report suggests postponing the project to link the Conciergerie and the Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité, separated by the Palais de Justice, the cost of which is estimated between 150 and 200 million euros. He also cites the abbey of Clairvaux, but it seems that to date the State prefers to entrust its reconversion to Edeis. The senators would like the CMN to establish a maintenance plan as part of its three-year plan which is soon coming to an end, and which should include the Saint-Nicolas tower in La Rochelle, closed until further notice and for which the restoration is estimated alone at 27 million euros.
The scope of the CMN has changed significantly over the past several years. Between 2005 and 2007, the castles of Chambord and Chaumont-sur-Loire left the fold of the CMN and later the castle of Haut-Koenigsbourg following the report of the Rémond Commission in 2003 on the transfer of national monuments to the local communities. If most of the sites resulting from the Rémond Commission were in deficit, this was not the case for the three aforementioned castles.