Les demeures anciennes d’Addis-Abeba. Discours et pratiques autour du patrimoine dans une métropole en reconstruction / The old residences of Addis Ababa. Discourses and practices around heritage in a city under reconstruction

The old residences of Addis Ababa. Discourses and practices around heritage in a city under reconstruction. Built during the founding of Addis Ababa by the high dignitaries of the empire, the old residences have been recognised as heritage by the public authorities since the beginning of the 1980s. Their architectural style, a blend of foreign in uences stampedwith an Ethiopian air, makes it a remarkable heritage in an urban landscape. Nevertheless, the successive inventories carried out by theMunicipality of AddisAbaba very seldomlead to the restoration of the homes whose often unsuitable uses have accelerated their deterioration. The progressive disappearance of this heritage, ampli ed by urban modernisation projects, preoccupies researchers and association that regularly sound the alarm. How can we explain this gap between public recognition of the old residences, and the absence of a voluntarist policy to preserve them ? As a response, this article interrogates the diverging representations regarding the place of this heritage within a capital, a symbol of a state under construction. Through the literature on Addis Ababa produced by European and Ethiopian researchers, the old residences are viewed as a witness to the founding of the Empire and of a unique social mix. Public authorities display strong contradictions and discontinuities regarding the preservation of this heritage. Beyond the tensions over the value of this heritage, this article explores the practices of owners (individuals, religious, public, and community) that maintain the buildings accord -ing to their own logics, demonstrating the diversity, but also the lack of a framework, in restoration initiatives. It concludes with a re ection on the news in the wake of themunicipal decision to restore several old residences within a framework of tourism development

Archaeology · Cultural heritage · Empire · Geography · Modernization theory · Old town · Political science · Sociology · Witness · African history and culture analysis · Cultural Identity and Heritage · History · Law · Public Administration