I previously wrote about the ubiquitous ‘Defense d’afficher’ signs that can be seen painted on municipal walls around France, but my attention was drawn recently to another variation on this message.

This one was a small white plaque screwed into a brick wall in a non-descript back street, but what particularly stood out was the date of the law. This was not the standard 1881 decree, but rather one that dated from 1943 and France’s infamous Vichy regime.

As the scrawled message on the plaque says, this was indeed a ‘loi Pétainiste‘ (or rather a ‘loi Laval‘), but what exactly is being forbidden here?

The message writer here has spotted the date, and looked to make comparisons between France’s collaborist state during the Second World War and today’s perceived authoritarian rulers, but in reality the law mentioned is rather banal. However, it is also one that had a big effect on the way French cities looked.

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