Fire set at the end of a march

Limoges, a city of 129,000 people in central France, woke on Sunday to find its town hall gutted. The fire broke out on Saturday, 17 October, in the late afternoon, as a demonstration was ending. Local authorities say the building was set alight by a group of masked individuals and put the number of attackers at 800. Mayor Guillaume Guérin, a centre-right Les Républicains member, described a crowd of several hundred people who smashed windows and used a battering ram on the main door. The arson came during a wave of unrest that spread across several French cities the same day, around protests against the cost of living and in defence of public services. Some 2,000 people were arrested nationwide, and rioters attacked government buildings and roughly 1,500 shops.

Damage to a 19th-century building

The neo-Renaissance town hall was inaugurated in 1883 and drew its inspiration from the Paris town hall. Its central clock tower and bell tower, which rose 43 metres, partly collapsed during the blaze. Prefect Maurice Barate said the roof fell onto the lower floors, sparing only the west wing, and that large parts of the exterior were destroyed. Local authorities said the old section was almost entirely destroyed inside, including the civil registry services. The modern rear wing, which houses the administrative offices, was saved. Barate described the loss as a heritage disaster.

Police numbers and blame

Guérin, visibly shaken, described how local police were swiftly overwhelmed by the crowd. He called the attack premeditated and well organised. He argued that too few officers were available to protect the building because national police units had been sent to the street protest, and he said not a single national police officer had been guarding the town hall. He also spoke of the country being in a very bad state and described himself as a small provincial mayor. Before the Sunday march, Guérin said elected officials from all republican camps had attended, except those of La France insoumise, which he held largely responsible for the chaos.

Crowds, comparisons and reaction

On Sunday afternoon more than a hundred people gathered in front of the ruin, some in silence and others photographing the skeletal frame. Witnesses compared the scene to the 2019 collapse of the Notre-Dame spire, while others recalled the Reichstag fire of 1933, which preceded the Nazi rise to power. Guérin has called for a 'Notre-Dame plan' to restore the town hall, but the reporting does not yet describe what that plan would involve. That evening, a crowd of 7,000 people, according to the city hall's estimate, gathered in a square before marching toward the building. US Vice President JD Vance used images of the fire in a post denouncing Western progressives for importing the third world into France and other countries.