The Fer canvas and Opera torchères: Nice seeks listing
The Nice municipal council has unanimously supported a petition to add two items to France’s register of historic monuments — the large canvas by Édouard Fer in the Romain-Gary library and a pair of bronze torchères from the Nice Opera. Both have been in place for over a century and now await restoration.
🏛 What the city wants protected
Historic-monument status is not only a recognition of value but also access to state co-financing for restoration work. The petition covers two items:
- the canvas by Édouard Fer, “Nice, inspirer of letters and the arts” (1923–1925);
- a pair of bronze torchères from the Nice Opera (1885).
The council’s decision is only the first step. The petition now goes to the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DRAC), a process that takes several months. If the answer is positive, both items become eligible for state restoration funding.
🎨 A canvas, not a fresco
Fer’s work is often called a mural, but it is a large canvas: 5 × 2.80 metres, around fourteen square metres. He painted it between 1923 and 1925 on commission from the city, specifically for the opening of the library on boulevard Dubouchage on 8 April 1925. It has hung in the main reading room ever since — exactly where it was meant to go.
The subject is an allegory of the city itself. Three female figures — a flower seller, a mender and a shepherdess — stand for the garden, the sea and the mountains of Nice; in the background, in morning light, you can pick out the flowering ridges of La Lanterne, Saint-Antoine-de-Ginestière and Saint-Pierre-de-Féric, as well as the Baou de Saint-Jeannet. The work is described in the catalogue of the Nice libraries.
The library was named after Romain Gary only in 2005; before that it was simply the Dubouchage library.
💡 Torchères that outlived a fire
The Nice Opera has a difficult history. On 23 March 1881 the previous theatre burned down during a performance of “Lucia di Lammermoor” — around two hundred people died, and a pyramid monument to the victims was raised in the Château cemetery. The current building opened on 7 February 1885 with Verdi’s “Aida”, and the bronze torchères date from that first interior.
Over one hundred and forty years the Opera’s interiors have been reworked repeatedly, and the torchères remain almost the only untouched elements of the original decor.
🔍 Why the torchères go through a separate procedure
The Opera building is already protected: it has been a classified historic monument since 31 March 1992. But protection of a building does not automatically extend to the objects inside it — those need a separate procedure, classification as an object. That is why the city needed a council decision of its own, even though the Opera has been on the register for more than thirty years.
⏳ What it means for the city
Nice has been methodically shoring up its cultural layer: the cultural centre in Biot reopened after renovation, and in the summer of 2026 the city is hosting an exhibition on the legacy of the 2024 Olympics. The petition for the canvas and the torchères follows the same logic: status first, then restoration money, and only then the confidence that these objects will see out another century.
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Photo: Leslie del Moral / Pexels