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The Theme Park at the Heart of France’s Culture War
France
dispatch
The
Theme Park at the Heart of France’s Culture War
The Puy
du Fou is one of France’s most visited theme parks. Its founder says it gives
the French a “founding narrative,” but critics say it peddles “far-right
propaganda.”
By Catherine Porter and Giulia Imbert
Visuals
by William Daniels
Reporting
from Puy du Fou theme park in Les Epesses, France
Sept. 9,
2026Updated 1:07 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/09/world/europe/theme-park-france-right-culture-war.html
In a
historical theme park set among the wheat fields of rural western France,
Viking boats and pianos emerge from ponds, and knights ride on horseback. Now
France’s most popular theme park after Disneyland’s sites near Paris, it has
opened an
outpost in Spain and aims to build one in England soon.
But many
in France hate the park, called the Puy du Fou.
Critics
have called it a peddler of “far-right propaganda,” an accusation that has
gained in resonance as ultraconservatives
edge closer to power for the first time since World War II. The
critics accuse it of weaponizing history to popularize the values of its
founder, Philippe de Villiers, a former lawmaker who supports far-right
politicians and has long campaigned against the European Union, Islam, gay
marriage and immigration.
He
recently wrote that the park is part of a larger “cultural battle” for the
country’s soul, and that “cultural victories precede political victories.” But
his son Nicolas, who has run the park since 2012, said his only ambition is “to
create shows that make people love France,” adding, “For me, that is my only
cultural battle.”
The park
is four hours southwest of Paris by car. With thousands of trees, growing amid
man-made rivers and ponds, the Puy du Fou feels more like a national park than
an amusement park. There are no carnival rides and few vendors. Instead, dirt
paths lead visitors to immersive sets as well as performances, mostly about
French history, that unfold in large outdoor arenas and indoor theaters, and
usually last around half an hour.
The map
locates Les Epesses, France, southwest of Paris, and home to the Puy du Fou
theme park.
50 mileS
English
Channel
Paris
A11
France
Loire
E3
Detail
area
Les
Epesses/
PUY DU
FOU
France
The New
York Times
The draw,
for most, is not just the mythic French stories, but the spectacular special
effects and the animals.
In a show
about the Romans, charioteers race teams of festooned horses around an Egyptian
obelisk that later splits into a giant galley boat. In another show, more than
300 live birds, including vultures and bald eagles, wheel over spectators’
heads.
“The
mechanical engineering is incredible,” said Arido Agrifoglio, 69, a retired
doctor from Switzerland, lining up with his wife, Sylvie, for their ninth show
of the day. The night before they’d watched a performance in which
dancers, a pianist and a piano rose out of a pond.
“I often
wonder, ‘How did they do that?’” Mr. Agrifoglio said.
Image
Actors
dressed as Romans hyping the crowd before a show at Puy du Fou.
Video
The
Roman-themed performance includes circus games and chariot racing.
Before
the 250-acre park existed, Philippe de Villiers launched a single show in 1978
beside a ruined castle called Puy du Fou, which he has said is Old French and
Latin for “hill of beech trees.”
Then a
student at the country’s elite university for civil servants, Philippe de
Villiers wrote the script for a performance about the region’s bloody
experience during the French Revolution, when locals took up arms against the
new government and were massacred. Since Philippe de Villiers couldn’t afford
to pay actors or stagehands, community members volunteered. The show, called
the Cinéscénie, has since expanded, and is still run by thousands of volunteers
in summer.
Philippe
de Villiers went on to become the country’s secretary of state for culture, and
an elected lawmaker. In 1989, after a trip to the Walt Disney World Resort in
Orlando, Fla., he saw the business potential. He created a new park next to the
Cinéscénie, staffed by professionals. He set about writing the scripts for new
shows that would offer the country what he called its “founding narrative.”
“We must
give the French back their past,” he wrote in his 2025 book “Populicide,” which
said immigration was causing civilizational collapse in France, where the book
was a bestseller.
Today,
the park has around 3,000 workers staffing in around 20 shows, five
history-themed hotels and 26 restaurants. The company earned roughly $350
million in 2025 with a record-breaking three million visitors, Nicolas de
Villiers said. In 2021, he opened a park in Toledo, Spain, that focuses on
Spanish history, and in 2025, he applied to open a British version near Oxford.
(Projects planned in Russia, Russian-occupied
Crimea and the United States never came to fruition.)
Image
Nicolas
de Villiers, center, the president of Puy de Fou and son of the park’s founder,
speaking with technicians during a performance.
Video
La
Cinéscénie was the show that inspired Puy de Fou, and is now accessed via a
separate entrance.
With its
mounting success, the park has come under intense criticism from left-wing
politicians and historians, who have for years pointed out inaccuracies in its
shows, and accused it of warping history for political reasons. That criticism
was amplified in 2022, when four historians published a scathing book called
“Le Puy du Faux,” or The Puy of Falsehood, that calls the park “ideological,”
where visitors will “learn nothing.”
“It’s the
erasure of the French Revolution and the praise of Christianity. That right
there is the Puy du Fou recipe,” said Florian Besson, one of the authors and a
medieval historian.
Many of
the shows center on Catholicism. The marauding Vikings set on attacking a
Christian village are stopped by a ghostly saint and swiftly converted. The
Romans are portrayed as cruel pagan overlords who — until they, too, converted
— persecuted the Christian Gauls.
“It’s a
complete reversal of history: Christianity came to Gaul from Rome, yet there it
is presented exactly the opposite way,” said Pauline Ducret, another historian
and co-author of the book.
The park
presents an “eternal France” that is under attack, Ms. Ducret said, if not by
Vikings, then by a revolutionary army or Germans — an echo of Mr. de Villiers’
anti-immigration views.
Video
A scene
depicting the baptism of Clovis, a king who ruled much of what would become
France, after the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Image
A
portrait of Joan of Arc in a Renaissance-themed chateau at the park.
Then
there are the choices of which parts of French history to present. There is
nothing, critics point out, that touches on France’s darkest moments: slavery,
colonialism, or Vichy — the government during World War II that collaborated
with the Nazis.
Philippe
de Villiers did not respond to interview requests. But his son Nicolas, 46,
spoke to us twice, once in a room above a restaurant in the park where waiters
sing French folk songs. He said that prescribing political aims to the park was
“ridiculous.”
“Are
Vikings right wing or left wing? Were Romans right wing or left wing?” he said.
“That question is completely out of step with the shows we present.”
But he
does see the park as helping to build the country’s collective memory. “If we
want as a people in France to have a common destiny,” he said, “we need common
memories.” And he made no apologies for omitting certain historical chapters.
“We
always prefer glory against shame,” he said.
Nicolas
de Villiers said he believed the recent deluge of criticism about the park was
motivated by jealousy, particularly from the left-wing elite that he said
controls the theater scene in Paris.
François
Ruffin, a left-wing presidential candidate, offered another theory. The
scrutiny, Mr. Ruffin said, rose with the fortunes of the far-right National
Rally party, whose leader, Marine Le Pen, has a strong chance of winning the
presidency next year.
When
Philippe de Villiers built Puy du Fou, it was “a pocket of resistance, keeping
the flame of neoconservatism alive,” Mr. Ruffin said in an interview. “Today
they have become dominant, the majority, and potentially poised to take power
next year,” Mr. Ruffin added.
The Puy
du Fou is just one part of a mounting right-wing cultural constellation, he
said, driven by the French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, whose holdings include
publishers, film companies and a right-wing television channel, CNews,
on which Philippe de Villiers has a Friday night show.
That
constellation is now winning France’s “culture war,” said Mr. Ruffin.
Image
A
performance featuring a viking raid on a medieval village.
Image
Visitors
resting in front of reproductions of World War I propaganda posters.
He has
called for the creation of a left-wing Puy du Fou that would mount shows on the
French Revolution, and the French resistance during World War II.
On a
recent sweltering day, families raced from one show to the next.
Some said
they liked the park’s historical message. Critics only “hate it because it’s
French,” said Laurent Smirnow, 53, a security guard.
But many
said they had come for the entertainment, not the history lessons or the
politics.
Valérie
Billet, 57, took a break under a tree with her in-laws and adult children.
Her
sister refused to come to the park because of Mr. de Villiers’ politics, she
said.
“When I
come here, I detach the park from the man who created it,” said Ms. Billet, an
English teacher. Sitting nearby, her daughter Nolwenn, 28, muttered under her
breath that the park’s biases were hard to ignore. “It’s something you can
definitely feel,” the daughter said.
Still,
she’d been back with her family four times.
Image
A
carousel in a model village inspired by the Belle Époque.
Catherine Porter is
an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in
Paris.
In Germany, Merz’s center-left partners rebel after far-right rout
In
Germany, Merz’s center-left partners rebel after far-right rout
The
center-left party’s strategic pivot is likely to deepen Merz’s myriad
challenges as questions mount over his ability to lead Germany’s relatively
weak coalition government.
September
9, 2026 4:00 am CET
By Nette
Nöstlinger
BERLIN —
Friedrich Merz’s center-left coalition partners increasingly see themselves
facing a stark choice: Turn against the reform course they’ve struck with the
chancellor or risk sinking with him.
Following
the conservatives’ stinging defeat to the far-right Alternative for Germany
(AfD) party in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday — a loss driven in great part by
dissatisfaction with Merz and his party, the Christian Democratic Union — there
are early signs the Social Democratic Party is turning against the series of
reforms it has agreed to push through with the unpopular chancellor.
The SPD’s
pivot is likely to deepen Merz’s myriad challenges as questions mount over his
ability to lead Germany’s relatively weak coalition government. Merz has
acknowledged that his dismal approval ratings helped fuel the AfD’s victory in
Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, but argues that the answer is to press ahead with his
reform agenda while doing a better job of explaining its necessity to voters.
That’s
not the conclusion his center-left coalition partners have drawn: They argue
the problem isn’t one of messaging but of substance.
“The path
the federal government has taken with its reform plans has caused particular
uncertainty,” Rasha Nasr, an SPD lawmaker in the Bundestag, told POLITICO’s
Berlin Playbook Podcast. “It’s very important now that, unlike others in the
coalition, we don’t just push this through. The people of Saxony-Anhalt have
told us very clearly: ‘This far and no further,’” she added.
Merz has
staked his chancellorship on tackling economic and welfare reforms that
previous governments deemed too politically difficult, even branding himself
the “reform chancellor.” His agenda includes raising the retirement age to
shore up the pension system, cutting some health-insurance benefits to curb
rising premiums and making it harder for workers to take sick leave in an
effort to boost growth.
Until
now, the SPD under the leadership of Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil has
advanced the reform drive, portraying itself as willing to undertake the tough
choices needed to restore Germany’s economy while fighting inside the coalition
to resist conservative excesses.
But given
Merz’s growing troubles — and rising questions about the durability of the
coalition government — the party’s calculus appears to have changed. The shift
also comes ahead of two additional state elections on Sept. 20 in which the SPD
is hoping to score at least one much-needed win.
Klingbeil
signaled a course change already on the night of the Saxony-Anhalt election.
The result provides “a reason to reflect on policies here in Berlin and on the
federal government’s reform agenda,” Klingbeil told public broadcaster ZDF as
votes were still being counted. “And rest assured, that’s exactly what we’ll
do.”
The open
disagreement prompted the chancellor to discuss divisions between the coalition
parties with SPD leaders Klingbeil and Bärbel Bas on Monday via phone,
according to a senior government official who was granted anonymity to discuss
internal matters.
SPD hopes
for redemption
Given its
own political weakness, the SPD is very unlikely to pull the plug on the
current coalition — a move that would trigger new elections while its poll
numbers are scraping historic lows. The party is currently polling at around 12
percent, 4.4 percentage points below its share of the vote in the 2025 federal
election, which was its worst result in well over a century.
But the
recent signals from SPD leaders suggest they are looking ahead to their own
political survival as Merz’s chancellorship grows increasingly precarious.
In the
eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania ahead of a Sept. 20 election,
the SPD’s incumbent premier, Manuela Schwesig, is polling a strong second
behind the AfD. Under Schwesig — who ranks among Germany’s most well-liked
politicians, according to surveys — the
SPD has been able to cut into the far right’s lead in recent weeks.
An SPD
victory in the state — or even a serious challenge to the AfD’s lead — could
give the beleaguered center-left party a desperately needed political boost.
But
what’s more significant for Germany’s coalition is the way Schwesig has at
least in part attained her popularity: by railing against Merz’s reform drive,
depicting the overhauls as harsh and unjust.
“Yes, we
need social reforms, the welfare state must be stabilized, and labor costs must
not rise,” she told Welt TV on Monday. “But it is unacceptable that, of all
people, those who work the hardest and contribute the most are the ones bearing
the heaviest burden. Many people also perceive this as unfair. And that is why
it is important to change course here.”
Should
the SPD congeal around Schwesig and her criticisms, it’s likely to further
complicate Merz’s ability to govern and pass legislation that satisfies his
increasingly restive conservative faction.
‘Unwavering
determination’
Already,
disagreements between the SPD and Merz’s conservatives are spilling into the
open.
SPD
politicians are questioning the coalition’s previously agreed plan to make it
harder for workers to take sick days, a measure that sparked public outrage
and, for many, reinforced Merz’s image as lacking empathy with regular people.
SPD politicians have also called for renewed state subsidies to lower fuel
prices — a proposal Merz’s CDU rejects as too expensive.
“Clearly,
when it comes to specific measures, there are certainly issues we need to
address this fall,” Tim Klüssendorf, the SPD’s general secretary, said of the
reforms on German television this week. “Take, for example, pensions, long-term
care, and health care, but also the question of whether we’re finally going to
do something about these gas prices, including through regulatory measures.
These are certainly the measures that must now be put on the table as a direct
consequence of the election results.”
Merz, for
his part, is sticking to his line that people would agree to his reforms if
they better understood their importance.
“This is
about nothing more and nothing less than the future of our country and the
opportunities for our children and grandchildren,” he said Monday. “And we must
not squander them. That is why my determination to continue on the path of
reform remains unwavering.”
Rasmus
Buchsteiner contributed reporting.
Future nostalgia: Europe’s unfinished song
“The study classed Europe’s voters in four
categories. The Positives (19%) are staunch pro-Europeans who view current
crises as a catalyst for a stronger, more integrated union. The Negatives (39%)
believe Europe’s best days are behind it.
Almost half of people in France, Germany and
Italy – and almost all who voted for radical-right parties such as Germany’s
AfD, France’s RN, the Dutch PVV and Reform UK – were Negatives, with 83%
speaking of Europe in terms of loss and decline.”
OVOODOCORVO
Future nostalgia: Europe’s unfinished
song
ECFR’s new research reveals Europeans
are suffering from an imagination gap. Many people want to see Europe strong
and flourishing—but fewer can picture a credible route from today’s disruptions
to that destination
Paweł Zerka @pawelzerka.bsky.social
on Bluesky
Senior Policy Fellow
https://ecfr.eu/special/future-nostalgia-europes-unfinished-song/
·
To find out what “Europe” means to people today, ECFR commissioned almost
6,000 interviews in six European countries and qualitative desk research across
15 more.
·
The interviews reveal that most people have strong opinions about Europe
and its future; the complementary research found that geopolitical chaos and
culture wars are helping the EU become more politicised in domestic debates.
·
How people feel about Europe may thus affect how they vote in the
potentially seismic domestic elections to come, in many of which the far right
leads in the polls.
·
The interviews also found many people want a stronger, more independent
and more united Europe. But relatively few can picture a credible route from
today’s disruptions to that destination.
·
This imagination gap is most prevalent among a pivotal constituency we
call “the uncertain”. Pro-European leaders need to fill it, lest people become
more receptive to politics that reinterpret the past as the future.
·
These leaders can do so by harnessing the power of “future nostalgia”, or
a longing for a time when a better future seemed within reach.
Disillusioned but dependent: new poll shows Europeans doubt EU’s future yet still seek its protection
Disillusioned
but dependent: new poll shows Europeans doubt EU’s future yet still seek its
protection
By Gaia Neiman,
Brussels
, 9
September 2026 06:00
A
new study has
found most Europeans are disillusioned about the future of the continent.
Co-published
with the European Cultural
Foundation, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) survey published on Wednesday (9 September)
reveals a general lack of confidence in Europe’s future, providing fertile
ground for far-right narratives of a weakened EU.
Almost
three-quarters of those interviewed said Europe is coping badly with its
greatest challenges – which most considered to be war and security, as well as
economic pressures.
Respondents
worried that Europe’s future is in danger, with 68 percent expressing a feeling
of a general deterioration of the EU.
The
ECFR’s survey found Europe to have become a more politically-salient topic,
making ‘Brussels’ one of the bloc’s main electoral battlegrounds.
Eurosceptics
keep criticism high amongst the far-right voter base in France,
Poland, Italy and beyond, with Alice Weidel, co-leader of AfD, promising to
take Germany out of the eurozone and the Schengen area.
“It’s
increasingly harder to talk about things like cost-of-living, climate policy or
migration without this becoming a discussion about Europe,” report author Paweł
Zerka told EUobserver.
Zerka,
the ECFR’s senior policy fellow, also warned that most mainstream leaders
“usually struggle to find the right
language to talk about Europe,” since there is no longer a real
polarisation between pro-European voters and eurosceptics.
Europeans want a united Europe but question whether it can get there, study finds
Europeans
want a united Europe but question whether it can get there, study finds
A
continent-wide crisis of confidence is creating fertile ground for far-right
narratives of decline, report suggests
Jon
Henley Europe correspondent
Wed 9 Sep
2026 07.00 CEST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/09/europeans-want-united-europe-union-study-finds
Europeans
overwhelmingly want a strong, united and independent Europe but question
whether it can get there, according to a study that suggests a continent-wide
crisis of confidence is creating fertile ground for far-right narratives of
decline.
The
report, based on 5,800 interviews in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands,
Poland and the UK and analysis of the way Europe is discussed in the politics
and media of 15 countries, paints a picture of an ambitious but disillusioned
public.
It found
that 68% of respondents spoke about Europe in terms of a “general deterioration
or loss of normality”, compared with just 12% who said they viewed the present
moment as a time of “European awakening and renewal”.
Many
recognised the major challenges facing Europe, including war (43%), economic
pressures (33%) and the need for greater international autonomy (29%). But 74%
said Europe was not dealing well with them, and 56% believed its future was “in
danger”.
The
problem is not lack of ambition: an overwhelming 73% of respondents harbour a
strong European vision of unity and political integration (35%), peace and
security (28%) or prosperity (19%), while only 13% hope for “less Europe” or EU
dissolution.
For many,
said the study’s author, Pawel Zerka, a senior fellow at the European Council
on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank, the problem was “not that they’ve
stopped wanting a stronger Europe, but that they no longer believe it’s
achievable”.
The
result, Zerka added, was an “imagination gap. People can picture the kind of
Europe they want, but struggle to imagine a credible path from where it is
today to where they want it to be. These are matters of policy, not just
communication.”
A week
before the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, is due to
deliver her annual “state of the union” address in Brussels, Zerka said the
evidence suggested the bloc needed “fewer grand promises” and more “proof of
trajectory”.
The study
cites dozens of conversations with Europeans. “I’m regularly relieved I live in
Europe. It’s not perfect and some things are going in the wrong direction, but
no region in the world is safer, freer and more democratic,” one German said.
However,
while he identified the climate crisis and far-right parties as the continent’s
greatest challenges, he said they were not being tackled effectively.
“Elections focus too much on the here and now, and not enough on the future,”
he said.
The
respondent said he would like Europe in 20 years’ time to be “free, democratic,
sustainable, less indebted, politically further to the left [and] peaceful”.
Asked whether he thought that was likely to happen, he said: “No.”
The study
classed Europe’s voters in four categories. The Positives (19%) are staunch
pro-Europeans who view current crises as a catalyst for a stronger, more
integrated union. The Negatives (39%) believe Europe’s best days are behind it.
Almost
half of people in France, Germany and Italy – and almost all who voted for
radical-right parties such as Germany’s AfD, France’s RN, the Dutch PVV and
Reform UK – were Negatives, with 83% speaking of Europe in terms of loss and
decline.
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