If your small village or town has a monument that qualifies as national heritage, there is a good chance the mairie has already applied to Mission Bern for grants to maintain or restore it.
‘Mission Bern’ is the other name for ‘Mission Patrimoine’, a government plan to safeguard France’s built heritage, which was created by Emmanuel Macron in 2017.
The president astutely chose one of France’s most likeable personalities, Stéphane Bern, to front the project, hoping his huge popularity would mobilise the public to help identify heritage assets at risk, so they could benefit from innovative sources of funding to safeguard their future.
In doing so, patrimoine would become a “national cause” and “the political heart of the nation, its identity and what makes us proud,” Mr Macron said in 2018.
It has worked out pretty well. The Mission Bern has so far identified 6,300 at-risk sites, saved 850 and raised €280million. Some 100 sites were chosen for the 2024 edition, out of 790 applications through its website.
“I have visited Lozère and Ardèche. Everything is for sale, the villages are deserted, there are no jobs left,” Bern had told Libération for a profile in 2016.
What they say about him
“TV shows featuring small French towns and their heritage play a decisive role in raising their national profile. These moments of exposure resonate powerfully on the web, with the effect of significantly but briefly increasing the number of searches for a commune. Typical examples are programmes presented by Stéphane Bern, and in particular Le Village Préféré des Français, or Le Monument Préféré des Français.”
French consultancy firm Nouvelles Marges on the ‘Bern effect’ on local tourism.
“There's a serious recurring problem with this programme, which is that there's no work on source criticism. Yet this is at the heart of the historian's profession.”
Thibault Le Hégarat, a history professor, on why he co-created the satirical ‘Bingo Bern’ in response to Secrets d’Histoire
“You don't reach this level of media exposure without ambition. Stéphane is very astute politically. He loves all forms of monarchy, including republicanism.”
Didier Porte, a comedian and journalist who worked with Bern on Le Fou du Roi
“France is a country visited by 86 million tourists. At this pace, they will soon be visiting ruins,” he added.
The same cannot be said of Bern’s career, which has seen him being a media stalwart on all things monarchy for years, and someone who continues to pull in big audiences.
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He was born on November 14, 1963 in Lyon (Rhône-Alpes) to Louis Bern and Melita Schlanger, who were both from Polish families which left their homeland to escape deportation during World War Two.
He had an older brother, Armand, born in 1962, who died in 2022.
His parents ran a very strict family home, where discipline was important.
Relief from this came when his mother took the boys to their grandparents’ home in Luxembourg, where he was allowed to eat chocolate and watch TV, including a weekly programme about the Luxembourg royal family.
“I associated family happiness with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg,” he told AFP in 2017 when he was granted citizenship of the country.
“It was my ideal kingdom. If I later became an expert on kings and queens, it was because my passion for history and royal families was born here.”
At 12, Bern was writing fan letters to Spain’s King Juan Carlos.
Much later, in 2022, he explained to TF1: “Royal families allowed me to imagine another family. I wanted to escape my condition. I wanted to dream bigger.”
Bern graduated from business school emlyon in 1985, shortly before joining Madame Figaro and Jours de France as a journalist and Dynastie as editor-in-chief, the last two newspapers specialising in coverage of royals
He was then president of Les Amis de la maison de France, a royalist foundation that considers the Count of Paris the legitimate claimant to the defunct throne of France as head of the House of Orléans.
Of France's three monarchist movements, Orléanism, Legitimism and Bonapartism, most royalists are Orléanists
Bern’s popularity surged as soon as he moved onto the small screen.
He was presenter of Sagas, a French TV show in the late 1990s about the lives of the rich and famous that was mocked for its outdated tone and Bern’s pompous voice and ‘Sunday best’ wardrobe. He was nicknamed, pejoratively, a ‘royal ringard’ (cheesy royal).
Nevertheless, Bern established himself an audience favourite as the anchor of Le Fou du Roi, a radio talkshow on France Inter, and as presenter of Secrets d’histoire, a history show on France 2 from 2007, then France 3 in 2019, attracting millions on both shows.
As a result, he regularly featured among the 50 Personnalités préférées des Français – an annual end-of-year popularity chart published by Le Journal du Dimanche.
The more his audience grew, the more career doors opened.
He commentated on Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding, and hosted several editions of Eurovision, Victoires de la musique classique and the Villages préférés des Français (which extended into gardens, houses and monuments).
He also wrote a string of history books and performed, here and there, in theatre and in TV films.
He was even offered a 25-second teaser gig playing Ezio Auditore, a fictional character in the Assassin’s Creed video game franchise.
Secrets d’histoire has been criticised by historians for its lack of sources and accuracy (see box), and by the far-left party La France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon for its perceived bias to monarchs over Republican personalities.
“I am not an historian. I am a storyteller,” said Bern, in response to the first accusation. Meanwhile, France 2 denied “any ideological bias” with regards to Mélenchon’s complaint.
“I would love to portray other personalities, but Louis XIV attracted five million viewers. When I profiled Georges Clemenceau, it fell to 3.2,” Bern added.
In 2013, Bern bought the former royal and military school in Thiron-Gardais, a village of 950 inhabitants in Eure-et-Loir, and went on to extensively renovate it. It is now a museum open from June 1 to September 15.
Bern Immortalised in wax with Queen Elizabeth IIfrederic REGLAIN / Alamy Stock Photo
He was elected to the town council with 97.3 % of the votes in March 2024.
Among the many titles Bern has been awarded by various monarchies over the years was his appointment, in 2014, as an Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II – a rare accomplishment for a French citizen.
“She [was] a living legend. I met a wonderful lady who could have been anyone’s grandmother with incredible stamina, a porcelain-like complexion and magnificent periwinkle eyes,” he said about their meeting.
“She is wonderfully human. She gives the impression, for the five minutes of your interview, that you are the most important person of her day.”
Bern’s wax statue in Musée Grévin, Paris’s equivalent of Madame Tussauds, stands beside the Queen’s.
