{"id":50398,"date":"2024-09-23T16:05:32","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T15:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ihedn.fr\/?p=50398"},"modified":"2025-09-03T15:40:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T14:40:24","slug":"patrimoine-ministere-armees-fer-de-lance-de-la-culture-de-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ihedn.fr\/en\/lundis-de-lihedn\/patrimoine-ministere-armees-fer-de-lance-de-la-culture-de-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"The heritage of the Ministry of Defence, spearheading defence culture"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Just behind the Rue de Valois is the H\u00f4tel de Brienne and the Hexagone Balard: after the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of the Armed Forces is the State's second-largest cultural player. Last weekend, the 41st edition of the European Heritage Days (JEP) was a great opportunity to find out, with almost 200,000 visitors (the figures for 2024 are not yet available, but there were more than 175,000 in 2023). These two days in a few figures: 95 sites open in mainland France and the overseas territories, including 36 exceptionally for the JEP; 800,000 exceptional cultural objects in the collections; 160 sites listed or registered as historic monuments, 10 national memorial sites and more than 80 memorial sites.<\/p>

But throughout the rest of the year, the Ministry of the Armed Forces and its various components carry out a major task of disseminating defence culture to civilians of all ages. Behind the three emblematic national museums - the Army Museum, the Navy Museum and the Air and Space Museum -..,\u00a0the fifteen or so arms museums\u00a0<\/a>spread across the country, present the history and heritage of the Troupes de marine (Fr\u00e9jus, Var), the sous-officiers (Saint-Maixent-l'\u00c9cole, Deux-S\u00e8vres) and the Troupes de montagne (Grenoble, Is\u00e8re), for example.<\/p>

Since the mid-1990s, these museums have opened year-round, attracting 300,000 visitors by 2023. \"There are 90% of civilians and 10% of military personnel, a ratio that has been reversed in 30 years,\" explains Major G\u00e9raud Seznec, the Army's Heritage Advisor. Each museum is autonomous in its management and communication. For example, the French Army Light Aviation (ALAT) and Helicopter Museum in Dax (Landes) has doubled its attendance in one year, thanks to a bold promotion on the Internet.\u00a0its social networks<\/a>with contributions from student pilots.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

OVER 11 MILLION VISITORS EVERY YEAR<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

So much for the \"small\" museums specific to the Army. But if we include the three \"big\" national museums (2 million visitors in 2023, including 600,000 under 26s) and, above all, the memorial sites, the heritage managed by the Ministry of the Armed Forces attracts more than 11 million visitors every year!<\/p>

These memorial sites, which account for the majority of visits to all the Ministry's sites, come under its Directorate for Remembrance, Culture and Archives (DMCA), which in turn comes under the authority of the General Secretariat for Administration (SGA). Since a ministerial decree in 2019, there have been 10\u00a0National memorial sites (HLMN)<\/a>These are managed by the Office national des combattants et des victimes de guerre (ONACVG), another MinArm entity. Of the 10 HLMN, 5 have a reception area and a mediation centre: Mont-Val\u00e9rien (Hauts-de-Seine), Montluc prison (Rh\u00f4ne), the Mont-Faron memorial (Var), the Struthof camp (Bas-Rhin) and the memorial to the martyrs of the deportation (on the \u00cele de la Cit\u00e9 in Paris).<\/p>

In addition to the 10 HLMN, there are 290 necropolises, 2,170 military squares in communal cemeteries, 47 military cemeteries in the overseas territories and 1,000 burial sites in more than 80 countries. In total, for the upkeep of these places of remembrance, the DMCA has allocated almost \u20ac16m in 2023 to the various players in the Ministry of the Armed Forces (ONaCVG in mainland France, headquarters for overseas territories and defence attach\u00e9s in embassies abroad).<\/p>

This mission represents only a small part of the DMCA's activities, with a total budget of around \u20ac320 million in 2024. It is run by two subdirectorates and a national department:<\/p>