Emmanuel Macron promised this Friday that the Heritage Lotto, aimed at restoring endangered goods and which this year celebrates its fifth edition, will be maintained for the next five years.
“It will last (others) at least five years (…) I hope that this decade has made the thing irreversible,” he said in Guéret (Creuse), where the small Italian theater will benefit from an aid of 500,000 euros from the Patrimonial Loto for its restoration and reopening.
“This heritage policy is important because it allows our cities and towns to rediscover their history”, added along with his wife Brigitte Macron, the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak and Stéphane Bern, head of the Heritage Mission.
European Heritage Days
Built in 1837, Guéret’s Italianate theater was used as a cantonment for soldiers during World War I and then transformed into a cinema from 1932 until its closure in 1983. The presidential couple, Stéphane Bern, the Minister of Culture and The President and CEO of La Française des Jeux, Stéphane Pallez, visited the site, mired in sleep for 40 years.
“We are going to be able to rehabilitate this theater, reopen it and do theater there. It’s great”, greeted the president on the eve of the 39th edition of the European Heritage Days, Saturday and Sunday.
“We have young people of all ages who are going to be able to recover this place, artisans, artists who are going to be able to work,” he added.
The president and his wife attended a short performance of Hamlet by high school students in Guéret. Asked by primary school students about his favorite cultural activity and monument, the head of state said that he read, because that is what he “knows how to do easily”, but that “he also liked the theater”.
745 endangered sites saved
The Loto du Patrimoine has raised 200 million euros and saved 745 endangered sites since 2018, it said. Patrimony, “is pride, they are projects, it is the life of our territories and then it is beauty. We need it to give meaning to life,” Emmanuel Macron launched.
He confessed that he first thought of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, “because I saw it burn,” he added.
The presidential couple then headed to Aubusson (Creuse), a stronghold of the French tapestry, where they attended a “business drop” of “Conversation with Smaug”, an 8m² tapestry inspired by the work of British writer JRR Tolkien. The fall of the loom is the symbolic moment in which the threads are cut and the tapestry is unveiled. The work required 900 hours of work from February to August.
“There are trades that are part of our history. It is an immense French treasure” that must be preserved,” said the president. “Hand trades” have often been “neglected” when they are “fundamental trades where there are job prospects.” . ,” he insisted.
Source: BFM TV
