Question 14319 — cultural heritage

Summary

Mr. Aurélien Dutremble alerts the Minister of Culture to the particularly worrying situation linked to the management of rainwater in Autun, in Saône-et-Loire, and its serious consequences on the preservation of historical heritage. Indeed, following work carried out in 2007 around Saint-Lazare Cathedral and the Gislebertus Garden, the ancient hydraulic balance of the site was deeply and lastingly destabilized. Where the floors naturally absorbed rainwater, it is now artificially concentrated and violently released onto public roads, generating massive, abnormal and perfectly predictable runoff. As several heritage observers point out, this situation is less an inevitability than a clear planning error, never corrected for almost twenty years. Worse still, the absence of intervention reflects a form of administrative blindness in the face of perfectly identified disorders. This faulty management has already produced serious consequences: partial collapses of the Gallo-Roman rampart in 2010 and then in 2020, as well as accelerated deterioration of the Hôtel d'Éguilly, a building listed in the inventory of historic monuments, today threatened with ruin and rendered uninhabitable. This is no longer a theoretical risk, but of ongoing, visible and documented degradation. The ancient enclosure of Autun, built from the end of the 1st century BC, nevertheless constitutes one of the most remarkable fortified complexes in the Roman West. More than six kilometers long and encompassing nearly 200 hectares, it is largely classified as historical monuments. As such, it should benefit from vigilance and protection exemplary, which is clearly far from being the case today. Several technical assessments have unambiguously established the origin of the problems: inadequate management of rainwater. They also identified simple, known and proven solutions, such as the creation of a retention basin or the rehabilitation of the drainage network. However, despite this clear diagnosis, no structuring action has been taken, allowing a situation to persist that some now describe as a serious failure by public authorities. This inertia raises questions all the more as it concerns a classified site, subject to strict legal obligations in terms of conservation. Above all, it reveals a worrying failure in coordination between the different public actors: State, local authorities and heritage services, each seeming to pass the blame on to each other. responsibility while the heritage deteriorates. Beyond the present case, this situation illustrates a broader drift: that of fragmented and ineffective management of the risks weighing on historical monuments that are nevertheless recognized as exceptional. In this context, he asks it to please specify: the urgent measures that the State intends to take in order to put an end to the hydraulic disorders observed in Autun; the calendar precise and binding of the necessary works, in particular the creation of a rainwater retention system; the respective responsibilities of the various public actors in this matter and any failures noted; the concrete means that the State intends to mobilize in order to guarantee, finally, the lasting preservation of this exceptional heritage.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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