Montpellier enlighted, 2015

 

Winter solstices would be horrific with no light célébrations.

This being said, we might enjoy the view of a clear unpolluted winter sky. Who knows? Which of us, computer-users, has ever directly experienced the view of a stellar landscape, milky way, and meditated on the universe in this situation?

Icelanders, certainly. They even have auroras borealis. This all doesn't prevent them from multiplying celebrations and parties, nor keeps them from needing brennivin and having seasonnal dépressions.

 

Montpellier might be one of the sunniest places of the continental France, the days shorten, November 13th darkened everything, it hardly ever snows and children need some enchantment.

We started with Hanukah...

and went on with stories, movies, songs, theater, ice-skating.

We watched "Labyrinth", I was ready to cry on the Goblin King.

 

 

 

The agglomeration organized as last year 3 days of light celebration.

There was no Hanukka lights in the city this time, because of the terrorist threats. An allusion to Hanukka on the buildings would have been a valid act of resistance, but antisemitism is growing. Hommages are a huge lie: people don't like victims and don't trust them for being innocent. They applaude the muslims refusing an imaginary victimisation fed by manipulative politically religious authorities, and would like to deny to raped women and stabbed jews the quality of victims.

This is the way people are.

 

Two churches and two non-religious buildings were changed into 3D screens by some lightning artists.

The show on Saint-Denis Church turned around two good ideas.

It was much better on the Saint-Roch Church (a major step in the pilgrimage toward Santiago de Compostela).

There, the sound as well as the moving images were Worth watching - from all sides, and many times: a pleasure. There were less projections of religious paintings than last year, it was much more living, playfull. References were made to Alice in Wonderland rather than to the History of European art...

 

 

 

On the Prefecture, on the contrary, huge disappointment.

The show was a poor version of last year's show: poor quality, poor inspiration.

The place wasn't crowded.

 

 

People headed toward the Triumph Arch.

Some gigantic starmen and women accompanied the walk...

They could have been more professionnal, but well.

 

 

 

 

 

The show on the arch was impressive.

The idea of telling the story of human lightning, from the candel to our days, wasn't greatly exploited, but was a pretext to quite a fiesta.

 

Now, if you imagine Montpellier is a high center of urban life...

Public culture often appears like diamonds for pigs.

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...