, classified as a historical monument in 2005
Genesis The ("National Properties"), created in the wake of the nationalization of Church property (Decree of the clergy property made available to the Nation of 2 November 1789), emigrants (Decree of 9 November 1791) and the crown of France (Decree of 10 August 1792), have had varying fortunes. Some were appropriated by the state due to popular vindictiveness, giving rise to the notion of vandalism invented by the
Abbé Grégoire in a report presented to the Convention on 31 August 1794 on "the destruction carried out by vandalism and the means of recovering it". Other properties have been kept by the state and have changed functions (prisons such as
Maguelone,
Clairvaux,
Mont-Saint-Michel), but the greater part were sold to individuals, often to serve as a quarry for building materials and have disappeared (
Abbey of Cluny,
Vézelay Abbey, etc.). In 1790,
Aubin Louis Millin spoke for the first time of "historical monument" in a report submitted to the
Constituent Assembly on the occasion of the demolition of the
Bastille. The phrase "Historic monument" thus became symbolic of the pre-revolutionary era, the
Ancien Régime. The idea of preserving a site linked to the Ancien Régime circulated, and the Assembly, under the impetus of
Talleyrand, adopted the decree of 13 October 1790, which created the Commission of Monuments, whose role is to study "the fate of monuments, arts and sciences". In 1791,
Alexandre Lenoir was appointed to create the
Museum of French Monuments, opened in 1795, in which he gathered the fragments of architecture that he had managed to save from destruction over the previous several years. But this museum was closed by
Louis XVIII under the ordinance of 24 April 1816, during the
Restoration, and its collections, which were to be returned "to families and churches", were ultimately dispersed from state control. The vandalism of the French built environment that accompanied the anticlerical nature of the
French Revolution subsequently inspired numerous responses, particularly ones tinged with nostalgia and romanticism; for example, either
Chateaubriand or
Victor Hugo published in 1825 a pamphlet,
War for Demolition. The protection of historic monuments necessarily involves the creation of an inventory, and from 1795 onward the council of civil buildings completed the inventory of the castles that
Louis XVI had started. In 1820,
Baron Taylor and
Charles Nodier published their
Picturesque and Romantic Voyages in Ancient France, at the time when the first archaeological societies in the country were being formed. The
Celtic Academy was founded in 1804 by Éloi Johanneau and others, who met for the first time on 3 Ventôse year XIII (22 February 1805). This first association was to be devoted only to the study of the
Celts, but quickly its members became interested in national antiquities. As early as 1811,
Roquefort proposed to change the name of the society to give it one more in line with its activity. The new statutes as well as the new one of the company,
Société des antiquaires de France, were adopted on 29 October 1813.
Arcisse de Caumont founded the
Society of Antiquaries of Normandy in 1824, and the
French Society of Archeology in 1834. The
Archaeological Society of the South of France was founded by
Alexandre Du Mège in 1831. In 1834 the ''Société des Antiquaires de l'Ouest
was founded in Poitiers by Charles Mangon de La Lande from members of the Academic Society of Agriculture, Belles Lettres, Sciences and Arts of Poitiers,
itself founded in 1818. Other societies would follow in the various departements such as the Société des antiquaires de Picardie à Amiens. In turn, the Committee for Historical and Scientific Work'' was founded by
François Guizot in 1834 to direct research and support that of various learned societies.
Creation of the , 1819–1880 In 1819, for the first time, the budget of the Ministry of the Interior included an allowance of 80,000 francs for "historical monuments", about one-fifteenth of the total sum. Under the
July Monarchy, on 21 October 1830, the Minister of the Interior,
François Guizot proposed in a report presented to King
Louis-Philippe to create the post of Inspector of Historic Monuments which he assigned to
Ludovic Vitet on 25 November 1830, then reassigned to
Prosper Mérimée on 27 May 1834. The mission of the Inspector of Historic Monuments was to classify the buildings and to distribute the funds for maintenance and restoration. On 29 September 1837, the Minister of the Interior, the
Count of Montalivet, officially established the Commission for Historic Monuments (), succeeding the former Committee for the Arts. Composed of seven volunteers and chaired by
Jean Vatout, the Director of Public monuments, the new Commission carried out inventory and classification work (classification on the basis of political considerations then emphasizing around 1835 sites primarily of historical interest only, expanded from 1841 to include those for their architectural quality) and the allocation of funding. It was also responsible for training architects who work on monuments (starting with
Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc). In 1840,
the Commission published its first list, composed of 1082 historical monuments, including 934 buildings. This list consisted only of prehistoric monuments and ancient and medieval buildings (those constructed between the 5th and 16th centuries), which predictably included many religious buildings, but also objects that today might be termed broadly "material culture", such as the
Bayeux Tapestry. All of these sites were and remain properties of the state, the department or the municipality in which they are located, the conservation of which requires work (and therefore funds). Subsequently, the Commission continued its inventory work, and the historical monuments increased in number and the area of protection widened in three directions: chronological, categorical (that is, towards vernacular architecture), and typological or conceptual (towards the protection of buildings representing a particular type—i.e., the
typicum—and no longer just the unique structure or
unicum). Thus for this purpose, in 1851 the Commission created the
Mission Héliographique, responsible for photographing French monuments, one of the earliest and most significant widespread and systematic uses of
photography, one of whose chief employees was
Édouard-Denis Baldus. However, local authorities, the
Catholic Church and the
French Army were reluctant to recognize the prerogatives of the state over their heritage; furthermore, the classification of monuments that were privately owned required the owners' consent. These obstacles explain why the number of monuments classified annually actually decreased from 2,800 in 1848 to 1,563 in 1873.
Development and expansion, 1880–1930 The law of 30 March 1887, for the conservation of historic monuments, enumerated for the first time the specific criteria and procedure for official classification of monuments. It also contains provisions establishing the body of chief architects of historic monuments (or ACMH, drawing inspiration from the situation of diocesan architects in the Service des Edifices Diocésains—a state agency designed for the specific upkeep of church properties—and gradually replacing local architects) established by decree of 26 January 1892. In 1893 the first competition of the ACMH took place, and finally in 1907 a decree permanently enshrined their legal status. Proposed by the Minister of Public Education
Aristide Briand, the law of April 21, 1906, on the protection of natural sites and monuments of artistic character, resulted from the action carried out among others by the Society of Friends of Trees (founded in 1898 by Julien-François Jeannel), the French Alpine Club, the Society for the Protection of Landscapes and the aesthetics of France, and the Touring Club of France, which had all protested vigorously against the effects of industrialization. the 1906 law laid down the principle of classification of picturesque natural sites. Under the
1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, local communities and the state were entrusted with the responsibility of the religious buildings, but certain communes refused to take charge of some of these buildings, which were not considered to be of "national interest", while other localities did not hesitate to auction off their heritage, which caused scandals and revealed the weaknesses of the legislative texts of 1887. The law of December 31, 1913, on historic monuments complemented and improved the provisions of the 1887 law, widening the field of protection of the classification criteria (to properties whose conservation no longer responds simply to the notion of "national interest" but to that of "public interest", which also takes into account the small local heritage classification extended to private property without needing the consent of the owner, a prelude to registration in the additional inventory), defining the obligatory actors, establishing criminal and civil sanctions in the event of unauthorized work on listed monuments, etc. That same year, the Commission of Historic Monuments also accepted four castles dating from later than the Middle Ages:
Luxembourg Palace,
Versailles, Maisons-Laffitte, and the
Louvre. At the end of 1911, more than 4,000 buildings and 14,000 objects were classified. During the 1920s and 1930s, the classification opened up to private heritage, which created an easement which was then considered as a deprivation of property (see on this subject the
Royal Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans in 1926), but which was then compensated by the subsidization of works, then by tax advantages. It also opens up to the Renaissance and the age of neoclassicism, roughly from the 16th to the 18th century (e.g., the
Church of St. Genevieve of Paris in 1920). There was also the acceptance, timidly, of eclectic architecture of the 19th century: the classification in 1923 of the
Opera Garnier. With the abandonment of the sites by the military following
World War I, Renaissance and neoclassical military architecture began to be classified as well. Finally, it was during this period that a sort of second-order classification was invented: the "inscription in the supplementary inventory of historical monuments", in 1925, which in 2005 became the "inscription under the title of historic monuments."
Extension and evolution of protections (since 1930) The law of May 2, 1930, which replaced that of 1906, consolidated the procedures for classifying built monuments on the one hand, and that of sites and natural spaces, by creating the category of "classified site and registered site". It also introduced the possibility of classifying as a site an area located near a listed or registered building. The protection of classified natural sites is currently governed by the Environment Code. The law of February 25, 1943, modifying the law of December 31, 1913, clarifies these provisions by introducing a field of vision of 500 meters. The law of 1943 indeed considers that a monument is also the impression that its surroundings give. This is why the law imposes a form of vigilance with regard to work projects in the field of visibility of historic monuments. Numerous classifications are made during the
Occupation, in order to prevent destruction by the occupier, but also to make the people in charge of protection work partly in order to escape the compulsory labor service in
Nazi Germany. The
Eiffel Tower was listed as a historical monument by decree of June 24, 1964. After the Second World War and the massive destruction due to the German bombings of 1940 and the Allies of 1944 and 1945, and the economic boom of the
Thirty Glorious Years during which destruction continues to rebuild something new, the protection in reaction changes scale. On October 4, 1962, a new law empowered the Minister of Culture
André Malraux to safeguard sectors of towns that were first created by the decree of March 4, 1964. As a result, the service of the General Inventory of monuments and artistic riches of France does not list only singular historical monuments. Meanwhile, historic buildings open to civil architecture sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the vernacular and native architecture starting with the
Palais idéal du facteur Cheval, in 1969, and the monumental architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is when a few of those monuments were entered or classified: • the Eiffel Tower (1887–1889), inscribed in 1964 • the
Villa Savoye (1929–1931), listed in 1965 • the
Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel in
Ronchamp (1950–1955), listed in 1965 and then classified in 1967 • the
Notre-Dame du Raincy church (1922–1923), listed in 1966 • the Villa Stein (1927–1928), inscribed in 1975 • the
Unité d'Habitation (or Cité Radieuse) of Marseilles (1945–1952), classified in 1995 • the Church of the Sacred Heart of Audincourt (1949–1951), classified in 1996 • the Notre-Dame-de-Any-Grâce church on the Assy plateau, classified in 2004 Metallic architecture took a long time to be recognized and classified:
Les Halles by
Victor Baltard were destroyed between 1969 and 1971 (only one pavilion was classified as a historical monument and was reassembled in
Nogent-sur-Marne in 1977, outside its context of origin), the
Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève by
Henri Labrouste was not registered until 1988.
Archives, which are collection of documents, were eligible to be classified as "historical monuments", until the passage of a 1979 law on archives. This established a specific regime (currently codified in book II of the heritage code), which is, however, inspired by much of the regime of historical monuments. , the first underground
public toilet in France, was granted the heritage status in 2011, The end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s saw the beginning of the protection of the industrial heritage, both the architecture (the mill of the Menier chocolate factory by
Jules Saulnier in
Noisiel was classified in 1992) and the machines (the automobile collection Schlumpf was classified in 1978 to avoid its dispersion). At the same time the mission of maritime and fluvial heritage, with the classification of lighthouses, beacons, river cranes, then boats (the first of these were the three-masted
Duchesse Anne and the barge
Mad-Atao in 1982), etc. The first underground
public toilet of France, the
Lavatory Madeleine, was granted the heritage status in 2011. Also protected are historic villages: Joan of Arc's birthplace (classified from 1840) or that of Napoleon I, the wall of Federated, Oradour-sur-Glane (ranked May 10, 1946), etc.; and gardens: around 1920 the parks of Versailles and Fontainebleau were listed, as was that of Azay-le-Rideau around 1930. Other monuments, reflections of French Art Nouveau (in particular the movement of the
Ecole de Nancy) were also listed at the end of the 1990s, mainly in Nancy. To accentuate this visibility, the label "Heritage 20th century" was created in 1999, automatically assigned to all the historical monuments built during the 20th century, but the present buildings in ZPPAUP or offered for regional commission heritage and architecture. The name "additional inventory of historic monuments" was replaced by "registration as historical monuments" in 2005. == Historical distribution and statistics ==