France. 80% of cultural places owned or certified by the State are more or less accessible to people with reduced mobility. This is the observation recently drawn up by a mission from the General Inspectorate of Cultural Affairs at the request of the minister who wanted to ensure the implementation of the 2005 law. This indicator is naturally very estimated because many sites only offer partial accessibility to wheelchairs.
But above all it has very different realities: accessibility is obviously more assured for recent buildings than for old buildings. A very large part (89%) of the 470 labeled sites relating to creation are in the first category: contemporary art centers of national interest, national stages, national drama centers.
By their nature, old buildings present sometimes insurmountable obstacles to the installation of elevators or ramps. This is the case with the towers of Notre-Dame. In detail, of the 32 public establishments such as the Louvre Museum or the Orsay Museum, 29 (i.e. 90%) offer complete or almost complete accessibility. If we broaden the scope to all public cultural establishments (by adding, for example, art schools), the rate rises to 95%. Of the 16 services with national competence open to the public (National Museum of Archaeology, etc.), 11 “are or will soon be fully or very widely accessible by wheelchair” : the castles of Pau or Compiègne require heavy work to improve accessibility. Finally, the 120 places managed directly by the Drac (mainly churches and cathedrals) have a lower rate of 80%.
The Center des monuments nationaux (CMN) is a good mirror of accessibility problems in heritage sites. The CMN manages around a hundred historic monuments (including access to the towers of Notre-Dame) presenting very contrasting situations. Five offer total accessibility (Villers-Cotterêts…), 14 “wide” partial accessibility (Pantheon…), 33 partial accessibility (Château d’Angers…), and 39 are not accessible to PRMs (Mont-Saint-Michel abbey, Font-de-Gaume caves, Maison Renan de Tréguier…).
Many sites will never be accessible due to the building. However, the mission estimates the amount that would need to be invested at €65 million to bring it up to standard, which it describes as” reasonable “ of certain sites. But this evaluation does not quantify what should be done to improve the situation in Chambord, which despite its fame and attendance, does not yet offer a satisfactory solution.
