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Mirabilia. Essai sur l’Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel

Michel Melot

We have surely come a long way since Mérimée and the beginnings of the heritage protection! Today over 40 000 buildings are protected in France. Recent campaigns have integrated into this perimeter certain parts that were long looked down upon, such as industrial architecture. The author of this book wonders how we can face this inflation of the patrimony, and he knows what he is talking about since he directed the Inventaire général du patrimoine (General Inventory of patrimony) founded by Malraux, from 1996 to 2003. He underlines the apparent absurdities of our collective memory, when we note the Parisians are the ones who have lobbied for the Tarasque procession to be registered in the national heritage while the young population of the Tarascon region, of Arab origin, could not care less, or the traps set by history where the Eiffel Tower was considered “useless and monstrous” by its contemporaries and it has now become a sacred monument. He also shows how the extension of the notion of patrimony has allowed welcoming elements “from the cathedral to the little spoon”. This unacceptable exaggeration will one day inevitably call for a dose of iconoclasm…


Mirabilia. Essai sur l’Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel by Michel Melot, Gallimard, 2012, 304 p., €22.

Mirabilia. Essai sur l’Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel - Michel Melot


Review published in the newsletter #265 - from 28 June 2012 to 4 July 2012

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