Patrimoines en résistance

“Heritage in Resistance” takes place at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine from May 20, 2026, to January 3, 2027. The itinerary starts with a clear observation: in the 21st century, monuments and historic centers are prime targets of armed conflicts, from Bamiyan to Odessa.

Designed by Élisabeth Essaïan, Mathilde Leloup, and Yves Ubelmann, the project articulates three sequences - Erase - Resist - Repair - juxtaposing historic sites and contemporary scenes: Timbuktu, Palmyra, Mosul, Gaza, Aleppo, Odessa. The scenography combines maps from Sciences Po’s cartography workshop, photographs, molds, models, films, and 3D restitutions produced by Iconem.

Under the patronage of the French National Commission for UNESCO and produced in partnership with the Réunion des musées nationaux, Grand Palais.

A century of heritage destruction side by side At the entrance, a map from Sciences Po’s cartography workshop aligns Timbuktu, Bamiyan, Palmyra, Gaza, and Odessa on the same plane, listing methods: blasting, bombing, looting, population displacement. The route then shifts to 1914.

Photographs of ruined monuments sit alongside molds of medieval French sculpture made before the war on buildings now lost. Panels show period inscriptions: “sculpture destroyed by barbarians, 3rd-5th century,” “sculpture mutilated by Germans.”

Further on, L’Illustration and postcards document the destruction of Louvain on August 25-26, 1914, then Reims on September 19, with drawings by Georges Scott and François Flameng.

Digitization, inventories, and everyday preservation acts In the next room, Iconem’s screens play. The old city of Mosul, digitized in Iraq in 2018, is reconstructed stone by stone; alongside scroll Palmyra, Bamiyan, Timbuktu.

Around, low models reconstruct temporary shelters, protection crates, handwritten inventories. Videos follow groups of citizens and architects measuring, photographing, packing.

Heritage protection, once entrusted mainly to UNESCO, ALIPH, or the Aga Khan Foundation, now relies on NGOs, associations, and local partners. The Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine showcases these everyday gestures in their materiality.

A display case collects field notebooks, inventory sheets, hard drives. In 2023, the historic center of Odessa was urgently inscribed on the World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage in Danger on January 25.

The Ukrainian example is shown alongside Syria: Odessa’s historic center, urgently inscribed by UNESCO on the World Heritage in Danger List on January 25, 2023, engages in dialogue with Palmyra, filmed in 2016 after ISIS’s withdrawal. Two wars, two decades, one documentary process.

Another case displays contemporary artworks in conversation with these documentary gestures. In conflict zones, every everyday action protects both bodies and the memory of inhabitants.

A ticket to the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine grants access to all permanent collections. Guerchom Ndebo, Virunga National Park, DRC, December 2020.

Men carry charcoal at the Kulupango road market, on the edge of Virunga National Park, just north of Goma, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. In the image, men cross a rural market carrying large black sacks heavily loaded on their shoulders; in the background, other carriers and the shadows of tropical trees are seen.

Captured in December 2020 by Guerchom Ndebo, photographer based in Goma, the scene unfolds at Kulupango, on the border of Virunga National Park, Africa’s oldest national park, listed as UNESCO World Heritage. This market, the main supplier for Goma, handles charcoal more than half of which comes from illegal park exploitation, according to WWF.

Produced as part of the collaborative project Congo in Conversation led by Finbarr O’Reilly, winner of the 11th Carmignac Photojournalism Award, the photograph broadens the concept of heritage far beyond built structures: at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, it illustrates a contemporary form of erasure, ecocide, affecting natural heritage and communities dependent on it.

Training sites, victims’ memory, and digital restitution The final section of “Heritage in Resistance” gathers fragments, surveys, and samples bearing witness to ongoing projects on various sites. Videos document training sites conducted with local populations, where future designers learn to rebuild a wall and survey an arch.

In the 21st century, the vocabulary has changed: alongside reconstruction, there is now post-conflict repair, a comprehensive approach often beginning before the end of hostilities. The collected documents concern not only built heritage but also the natural environment, bodies and minds, particularly women who have suffered sexual violence.

Further on, life-size models present memorial devices: low steles, ground pathways, plantings. The stated goal is to rebuild a society and restore the spatial and temporal conditions for communal life.

In the final room, the digitization of Mosul interacts with reconstruction photographs from Timbuktu. A number floats above these images: on September 27, 2016, the ICC sentenced Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi to nine years in prison, the first defendant tried there for heritage destruction.