Closed since July 2024, the Saint-Nicolas tower in La Rochelle will undergo emergency consolidation work in March. The movements of the building reveal that it is cracking from below and “in several directions”.
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It is the symbol of the city of La Rochelle: closed since last July, the Saint-Nicolas tower will be the subject “an emergency comfort operation” and should not reopen to the public before 2030, as reported by Sud Ouest in its January 25 edition. The latest readings from the crack gauges placed on the building are not reassuring. They show an increased fragility of the building, now surrounded by a wooden palisade intended to secure the site.
The Saint-Nicolas Tower in La Rochelle presents significant cracks, Saturday January 25, 2025, which have recently worsened, requiring emergency intervention from March to consolidate the building.
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© Marc Millet – France Télévisions
“The disturbances in the tower have worsenedexplains Stéphanie Lhortolary, administrator of the Center des monuments nationaux. This reinforcement operation is mandatory before emergency work. We will have one year of work (…) and then, from around the end of 2026, we will start the restoration project.”
The cracks have spread a lot with part of it now very degraded.
Stéphanie LhortolaryAdministrator of the Center of National Monuments
In March 2024, the Center for Historic Monuments had identified a first “abnormal movement of the tower in its northeast tilting”. Ce “larger movement than usual” was very quickly “connected to the high equinox tides”. Then, last July, when a crack tester triggered an alert, an overall inspection of the tower revealed that the pointed part, known as the spur, which was already showing damage, was in a more worrying state.
“The disorder had really gotten worse, in factcontinues Stéphanie Lhortolary. The cracks have spread a lot with a part now very degraded”she notes.
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The teams in charge of monitoring the building previously thought that the tower was moving “monolithicly”. Their observations now reveal that “the tower moves in several directions”. On the one hand, “the northeast part tilts naturally”on the other, “the spur tilts into the port pass”. “It’s as if the tower opened in two, from the bottom”explains Stéphanie Lhortolary. The urgency today is therefore to restore “coherence (…) and stability” to the building.
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In La Rochelle, the Saint-Nicolas tower, which marks the entrance to the port, will be closed to the public at least until 2030. The monument has several weaknesses which require consolidation work before even considering restoration work. The work is expected to begin in March, at a cost of around 5 million euros. Report by Damien Lefauconnier and Marc Millet.
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©France televisions
We will have to pass 12 km of cables which will be held in place by metal frames.
Stéphanie LhortolaryAdministrator of the Center of National Monuments
The work to be carried out as a priority promises to be substantial and is expected to cost nearly five million euros, “funded by the Ministry of Culture”confirms Stéphanie Lhortolary. “We have to strap the upper parts of the tower, because the upper parts do not deform like the lower parts. They have to be strapped.” As for the weakened spur and the northwest turret which also has a tendency to come loose, “we will have to pass tie rods inside the tower to connect these parts.” Then, it will be necessary to stabilize the sub-basement. “We will have to pass 12 km of cables which will be held by metal frames.”
Ultimately, these emergency operations should make it possible to consolidate the tower and prevent it from breaking into several pieces.
The emergency consolidation project should begin in March 2025.
