Mon Pellier: 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?