Regard the protestors. See how happy they are. Can you hear them whoop and whistle? The burning clock tower of the town hall has fallen inside the old building. Houp-là. How they whistle and whoop! The baying of such mobs in public places is as old as the history of towns and cities, the burning of buildings equally antique. Order and chaos, civilisation and barbarity, the call of the primeval.

Limoges has long been famed for its ‘arts of fire’, of the elements and crafts involved in the making of enamelware that reached its artistic zenith between the 12th and 14th centuries with a host of exquisite crucifixes, crosiers and tomb effigies, a hosanna of book covers and reliquary caskets. In 2017, Unesco awarded Limoges the honorary status of ‘Creative City’ in recognition of its traditions in the fields of arts and crafts. In 2026, vandals whooped as the ornate spire of the town hall’s clock tower plunged past a split pediment adorned by allegories of enamelling and goldsmithing, the city’s ‘arts of fire’.

Vandals whooped as the ornate spire of the town hall’s clock tower plunged past a split pediment

Vandals whooped as the ornate spire of the town hall’s clock tower plunged past a split pediment

Very few buildings have deserved this assault by the mob – the luxury of destruction – no matter how important the mob has believed, or believes, its cause to be. Limoges Town Hall, a debonaire French renaissance-revival design of the late 1870s was the work not just of the Parisian architect Charles Leclerc, but of artists and craft workers, of local masons and builders. These were workers who, in their different disciplines, gave to their city. Last Saturday, those who took away the dignity of Limoges were – if not in fact, then certainly in spirit – those who looted grand French shops in their lust for luxury goods, electronic gizmos and the sound of breaking glass.

Ah, yes, but for the French, this is, how you say, their way of expressing political dissatisfaction and has been since the revolution of 1789 and the reign of terror – such fun for the........

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