On Friday evening in Limoges, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu met the firefighters who fought the town-hall blaze on 17 October, then municipal police officers. He asked one officer how she was; she answered that they were there, her voice tight. Colleagues around her were equally emotional. Mayor Guillaume Guérin said they had been extremely courageous. Visibly shaken, he exchanged a few murmured words with the head of government.
Six days after the fire that ravaged the town hall on the sidelines of protests against the cost of living, much of the executive gathered in the city. Several ministers arrived in the afternoon to work with the municipality. Lecornu landed later. He did not hide his anger, recalled that he had himself worn the uniform in other circumstances, and described the visit as falling between two tasks: tending to a wounded city and preparing for a Saturday that looked high-risk.
All week Guérin, a Les Républicains mayor, had accused the state of allowing the police to fall back, demanded a plan modelled on Notre-Dame de Paris, and threatened to resign with his council if reconstruction were not fully funded. On Friday evening his tone softened. He still denounced what he called an army of raging madmen, then told the prime minister that the town hall would be rebuilt largely thanks to state support and thanked him for coming.
No cameras or journalists followed Lecornu into the ruins of the building opened in 1883, whose bell tower collapsed in the flames. He said those who had tried to set fire to the prefecture and then the town hall had sent a political message of radicalism meant to cause harm, and answered that people should raise their heads and not divide.
The town hall will be rebuilt under a Notre-Dame procedure. The building, previously listed only for its facades and roofs, will be classified as a historic monument. Project management will go to OPPIC, the state operator for major heritage works, and a Limoges amendment will be added to the housing bill. Donations will be 75 percent tax-deductible in 2027, and the state will convene a conference of funders. Residents of Limoges will pay nothing. Lecornu said he had worked all week so inhabitants, who are also municipal taxpayers, would not be left worse off.
The package also covers putting destroyed video-protection cameras back into service, support for the Limoges–Paris air link and the Carnot-Marceau district, and veterinary training from 2027. Lecornu, who remains first deputy mayor in his own commune, said a drama should not mean the municipal term is abandoned.
He promised national solidarity for shopkeepers whose premises were looted weeks before the holidays, while ruling out a blank cheque because, he said, there is no reason for the taxpayer to pay everything. For Saturday, gatherings of more than ten people are banned and a curfew applies in several central streets, placing Limoges on alert. Lecornu warned that some people want to provoke the rule of law and the Republic, and that the authorities would confront that.
Two suspects arrested this week, aged 34 and 66, were charged on Friday, including with attempted homicide against a person holding public authority, and placed in pre-trial detention. Lecornu said the investigation would show that the case is much more serious than some accounts have suggested.