Qualla: Hotel de Ville, Boulogne-sur-Mer

Hotel de Ville, Boulogne-sur-Mer: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wolf Meusel, Public domain. Walk into the Place Godefroy de Bouillon - the square is named for the man who became the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem in 1099 - and the building in front of you tells the whole layered story of Boulogne in one glance. On the left, a square belfry of pale stone, stocky and ancient, built when Henry II of England still ruled half of France. Bolted onto its side, a long facade of red brick and stone trim from the 1730s, expanded in the 1850s and again in the 1930s. The belfry was the dungeon of the Counts of Boulogne. The brick is where Charles de Gaulle was welcomed in 1945. Eight centuries of municipal government, all in one wall.

Image: Wolf Meusel | Public domain

Hotel de Ville, Boulogne-sur-Mer: The Belfry the Counts Built

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ziko, CC BY-SA 3.0. The belfry came first - by more than five hundred years. Renaud I, count of Dammartin, commissioned it in the late twelfth century as part of the residence of the Counts of Boulogne. It was, in essence, the count's dungeon - the keep tower of his urban castle, his private symbol ...

Image: Ziko | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hotel de Ville, Boulogne-sur-Mer: The City Hall of 1734

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dguendel, CC BY 4.0. By the early 1730s, the old town hall had become dilapidated. The mayor, Achille Mutinot, laid the foundation stone of a new building on 7 April 1734. Etienne Martinet - the same architect rebuilding the belfry tower - designed the new hall in a restrained neoclassical style: red...

Image: Dguendel | CC BY 4.0

Hotel de Ville, Boulogne-sur-Mer: Three Paintings, Three Refusals

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Romainberth, CC BY-SA 3.0. The paintings inside the hall tell stories the building cannot. In the Salle des Fetes, an enormous canvas by Claudius Jacquand shows the mayor Antoine Eurvin refusing to sign Boulogne's surrender to Henry VIII's English army during the siege of 1544. Another painting, by Francoi...

Image: Romainberth | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hotel de Ville, Boulogne-sur-Mer: Liberation and de Gaulle

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tango7174, CC BY-SA 4.0. Boulogne's twentieth-century hour came on 22 September 1944, when the 3rd Canadian Division liberated the town as part of Operation Wellhit. The city had been catastrophically damaged - four years earlier the Battle of Boulogne had ended with Stukas demolishing block after block;...

Image: Tango7174 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hotel de Ville, Boulogne-sur-Mer: Climbing the Belfry

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dguendel, CC BY 4.0. Today the belfry is open to visitors. The climb is steep - this was a thirteenth-century dungeon, not a tourist attraction - but at the top the view rewards everything below. To the west, the basilica's enormous dome. To the south, the cobbled streets of the Haute Ville and the l...

Image: Dguendel | CC BY 4.0