The story
Châlons-en-Champagne's town hall is a working mairie, where the council sits and couples marry, and four stone lions by the sculptor Antoine Lépine have guarded its columned front since 1778. It was built between 1772 and 1776, when Rouillé d'Orfeuil, the king's intendant in Champagne, cleared the old town centre for a new square, and it has been a listed historic monument since 1932.
What brings art lovers here hangs in the council chamber. Édouard Detaille, the leading French military painter of his day, filled a canvas more than five metres wide with the review held at the nearby military camp of Châlons on 9 October 1896. Tsar Nicholas II is on horseback, while President Félix Faure and the Empress Alexandra ride in an open carriage, a public display of the new alliance between France and Russia. The State commissioned the picture in 1897 and showed it at the Paris world's fair of 1900.
Because this is a town hall, the chamber is not always open to visitors, and the European Heritage Days in September are one of the surest chances to see it. The painting belongs to the Palace of Versailles, which deposited it here in 1936.
