Toulouse. The Army launches a unique appeal for donations to renovate the Palais Niel
A partnership agreement between the Palais Niel and the Heritage Foundation will be signed this Thursday, March 10. The objective: to launch a campaign to mobilize corporate and popular sponsorship to renovate the prestigious residence in Toulouse.
The Heritage Foundation and the Ministry of the Armed Forces are preparing to launch a campaign to mobilize sponsorship, unique in its kind, to renovate the Palais Niel. A hundred companies will be represented on Thursday March 10 at the signing of a partnership agreement between the Palais Niel and the Heritage Foundation.
Restoring the neoclassical brick and white stone facades, the statues, the columns, the stables or even the former cavalry picket… The work is enormous and the stakes are high for Bernard Cassagnet, dOccitanie-Pyrénées regional delegate of the Heritage Foundation.
A campaign to mobilize popular patronage and businesses”unique and innovative“will open within the Ministry of the Armed Forces.”This is a first because we never intervene on large buildings such as this one“, explains Bernard Cassagnet before adding, “we receive no aid, neither from the State nor from the local community, it is all the more complicated to find the funds“.
We must find at least €560,000. Then it will be necessary to make a call for tenders and the real estate service of Defense will choose the companies which will carry out the work.
Bernard Cassagnet, Occitanie-Pyrénées Regional Delegate of the Heritage Foundation.
The campaign should last 5 years and several stages of work are planned. But the restoration should begin in a few months, hopes Bernard Cassagnet. “As soon as we have recovered between 50,000 and 70,000 €, the works will begin“.
A challenge to take up, companies to convince and a sum to collect. Bernard Cassagnet is rather cautious. “We believe in it, it will work out well. There are moose that work very well. It shows that companies can mobilize“.
In the heart of the city, a few steps from the Jardin du Royal, in the extension of its own gardens, the Palais Niel recounts in Toulouse one hundred and fifty years of a glorious military past, from the Second Empire to the present day. But the most prestigious residence built in the 19th century in the pink city has suffered the onslaught of time and has aged a lot.
“The Palais Niel has never been renovated, it has been as it is since 1863“, explains the Occitanie-Pyrénées regional delegate of the Heritage Foundation.
It is one of the most beautiful monuments in Toulouse, it must be preserved.
Bernard Cassagnet
Built for the Marshal of France Adolphe Niel between 1863 and 1868, it is located rue Montoulieu-Saint-Jacques, on the edge of the Forain-François-Verdier alleys and the Square Boulingrin. But the Marshal died in 1869 and never lived in this prestigious residence of the Toulouse military heritage which nevertheless bears his name. Since 1999, the Palais Niel has been the operational headquarters of General Benoît Desmeulles, commander of the 11th Parachute Brigade.