Town Hall

Here you are in front of one of Épernay’s most elegant landmarks—the Town Hall. Sitting right at the start of Avenue de Champagne, it looks like a graceful château, surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens that have been officially recognized as a Remarkable Garden. This grand building was originally constructed in 1858 as a private mansion, commissioned by Victor Moët, the great-great-grandson of the founder of the famous Moët champagne house. It was a wedding gift for his daughter and her husband, Camille Jacques Victor Auban, which is why the building was originally known as the Auban-Moët mansion. The man behind the design was architect Victor Lenoir, who also designed Paris’s Montparnasse station, and the property was later expanded by architect Alphonse Gosset. The mansion features the elegant lines of the Second Empire style and is set within gardens designed by the Bühler brothers, two renowned 19th-century landscape architects best known for creating Lyon’s Parc de la Tête d’Or. In 1919, the estate was donated to the city, and the following year it officially became the Town Hall, after the original building was destroyed during World War I. Just in front of it, you’ll see a war memorial, inaugurated in 1924 to honor the victims of the Great War. Since 2012, this building has been listed as a Historic Monument, both for its exquisite architecture and for the magnificent interiors hidden behind its stately façade.