Shame over the city

No respect:
The Carthage Milk, ancient tunisian tea-room which should have been preserved as a gem, was destroyed to establish Le Corail...
The next victim of speculation in these surroundings is the cinéma Le Royal.

Don't talk about the architectural heritage in Montpellier without crying.

The city might be only a little more than a thousand years old, though it is swallowing a denaturated antic Lattara (nowadays Lattes), but the inhabitants obviously fear it might turn into a museum-city, deprived of cement buildings, a thick belt of malls and parking lots, a wide variety of suburbs (weathy or miserable, traditionnal or muslim, living or desert, safe or not...).

One could serve a brand new example every day.

The entrance of the early medieval crypte Notre-Dame-des-Tables is creepy and it seems that all the local drunkyards vomit there.

The crypte itself is used to present movies showing the medieval Jacques Coeur and the late Mayor Georges Frèche as the two figures of the city, and the most recent additions to the city (Antigone, Port Marianne, etc.) as the equals of Roma and Marseilles.

Now look at this door and blue-green window. There used to be an hotel there. Imagine a bluish piano bar... Imagine what Scorcese or Cassavetes could have done there. Imagine yourself drinking something there.

Now have a front look at the facade.

It is going to be replaced by a lego building. 

Whoever pretends it will fit to the proximity of the fortress, an ancient jail, now a part of the Justice Court should be transfered to this ancient jail and forgotten.

Another crime against the city:

the transformation, each December, of the Peyrou Gardens into a parking lot.

Those gardens are historical monuments, and the municipalities hate them.

1) It is forbidden to build higher than the level of the high alleys, since two royal edicts from 1775 and 1779. It makes the place a bit windy and wonderfully fresh in Summer, and gives great point of views - ponds/sea on the South, hills/Cévennes on the North... but seriously annoys our fanatical urbanists.

2) The architects or the national heritage refused the permission to build a parking under the monument, which already suffered long, and a lot, from the yearly installation of a carnival. The trucks and the attractions, especially the Ferris wheel, caused subsidence.

They hate the Peyrou.

They decided to smoke out walkers (crossing the gardens is one of the shortest and nicest way to reach the historical center), tourists looking for a view on the cathedral, Triumph Arch or ancient acqueduct, and the families with chidren.

Normally these alleys are full of elder people, lovers, musicians, and during holidays, running children.

The parents being slightly more responsible than the authorities, they don't let their little ones play amongst cars.

The municipalities convinced people that it was in their interest.

The historical center would die, they muttered.

People would go shopping in the malls, traditionnal shops, arts and crafts would disappear.

Parking on an historical monument is free, so it should attract buyers, or let them some money to buy something.

Logical.

I would have thought people would be ashamed to drive there... or that it would be reserved to obviously poor drivers with old bikes and prehistorical cars.

Well, no.

It is possibly safer to park a Porsche on an historical monument.

And you can park and phone in your decapotable so that everyone sees you.

Or visit the place in your coupé, thinking you are in a drive-in.

And guess what?

The other parkings are half empty.

Parkings normally full with the cars of workers.

Lawyers, plumbers, antiquarians, galerists park for free when  they go to work.

Shop owners could has well shoot themselves in the foot.

It doesn't attract buyers.

And yet the municipality extends the measure till the end of January, pretending it will help the commerce during the so-hard time of the Winter sales.

Should one call a society in which the authorities try so much to favor/increase consumeering a consumeering society?

Now, for my selfish joy - and possibly yours, some insights on what you can see above the cars.

There aren't always muslims praying everywhere in the direction of the Mecca.

Château d'eau

Small pond & acqueduct

Upside-down...

Save the santons

Reading the news on a facebook wall might make you think, this year, that France is on the verge of a religious civil war - which will with no doubt spread in Occident.

I started, this month, with the affair of the nativity scenes. The municipality of Béziers and the department of Vendée were summoned to retire the scenes set in public halls, on the basis of the laws establishing laicity and separation of the church and the State since 1905. The medias and the public opinion vehemently discussed about it. Without knowing much, and exagerating the problem. Traditionnal nativities scenes are allowed in public buildings. The mayor of Béziers might have set up an occitan crèche, which isn't considered as a religious symbol. It depicts the life in a village, with traditionnal caracters, houses, clothes. Caracters: butcher, flower seller, baker, smith, shoemaker, carpenter, weaver... You also see lou ravi (the idiot), the gipsy dancers and musicians, the lovers Mireille and Vincent... Mireille is the heroin of a poem written in 1859, in occitan, by Frédéric Mistral (who received the Nobel price for Litterature in 1904). She fell in love in the Baux de Provence, with a poor man. Her rich parents didn't allow her to marry Vincent. She flew away to Camargue and let herself die in the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Charles Gounod adapted the story in his 1863 opera, and it inspired a 1933 movie.

In such enlarged nativity scenes, the nativity is quite secondary... The name of the figurines, 'santons' means 'little saints', but the villagers, gipsies, animals, are not considered as saints.

Setting up scenes focused on nativity was a political provocation. In Montpellier, you would see traditionnal scenes at the xmas market, in occitan associations, and also probably in the churches. In a city or department hall, some xmas trees would have been quite enough. Yet it seems that the zealous mayor of Marseille removed the ancient traditionnal crèche years ago because it was already too religious for him. Moderation and culture are out of fashion.

Montpellier courageously (though there was no contestation) kept its yearly santon's fair. Santon's makers sell big and small santons, some dressed up with fabrics, some painted, some unpainted - great for amateur artists! I am far from being christian, but I enjoyed, long ago, painting elegant ladies from Arles.

The santon-makers are now threatened by the sino-american decorative fashions, the globalization and loss of rooting, the mexican portable nativity scenes, the design plastic nativities (Presepe, edited by Alessi), the chineese copies (made on resin), the crisis... The famous santonnier Carbonel anounced he planed to delocalize a part of his production in Tunisia. Will the Tunisians replace the ladies hairdress or straw hats by some veils? Hum. The santonniers should know that small is beautifull, and let the quality prime on international development...