Mark Horner

History | Transport | Tourist Industry | Education
🇫🇷 Melun is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region, north-central France. It is located in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris about 41 km from the centre of Paris. Melun is the prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne, and the seat of one of its arrondissements.
History Meledunum began as a Gaulish town; Caesar noted Melun as "a town of the Senones, situated on an island in the Seine"; at the island there was a wooden bridge, which his men repaired. Roman Meledunum was a mutatio where fresh horses were kept available for official couriers on the Roman road south-southeast of Paris, where it forded the Seine. Around 500 A.D, Clovis I granted Melun to a Gallo-Roman magnate, Aurelianus, who had fought for Clovis several times and apparently influenced his conversion to Christianity.

The Normans sacked it in 845. The castle of Melun became a royal residence of the Capetian kings. Hugh Capet gave Melun to Bouchard, his favorite. In the reign of Hugh's son, Robert II of France, Eudes, the count of Champagne, bought the city, but the king took it back for Bouchard in 999. The chatelain Gautier and his wife, who had sold the city, were hanged; Eudes escaped. Robert died there in July 1031.

Robert of Melun (c. 1100 – 27 February 1167) was an English scholastic Christian theologian who taught in France, and later became Bishop of Hereford in England. He studied under Peter Abelard in Paris before teaching there and at Melun, which gave him his surname.

In July 1415, Melun was besieged by King Henry V of England, who had recently signed the Treaty of Troyes with King Charles VI of France. The town was in the hands of the Dauphin, later Charles VII of France, who had been dispossessed by the treaty. The defenders were led by Arnaud Guillaume, seigneur de Barbazan, and fought off the besiegers for fourteen weeks before capitulating. The town was liberated by Joan of Arc on 17 April 1430.
Transport Melun is served by the Gare de Melun, which is an interchange station on Paris RER line D, on the Transilien R suburban rail line, and on several national rail lines.
Tourist Industry The Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame, Melun was the original home of the Melun Diptych.

The nearby château of Vaux-le-Vicomte is considered a smaller predecessor of Palace of Versailles.

The officers' school of the French Gendarmerie is located in Melun.
Education A campus of the École nationale de l'aviation civile (French civil aviation university) is located in Melun.

Europe/Paris/Seine-et-Marne

Image: Adobe Stock Philippe Prudhomme #401263490

Melun has a population of over 40,030 people. Melun also forms the centre of the wider Melun Arrondissement which has a population of over 278,808 people. It is also a part of the larger Seine-et-Marne Département.

To set up a UBI Lab for Melun see: https://www.ubilabnetwork.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/UBILabNetwork

Twin Towns, Sister Cities Melun has links with:

🇮🇹 Crema, Italy 🇩🇪 Stuttgart, Germany

Text Atribution: Wikipedia Text under CC-BY-SA license

Russell Page |
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Architect/Garden Designer Russell Page is associated with Melun. In 1937 Page was elected a fellow of the Institute of Landscape Architects and in the late 1930s wrote a number of articles for the Institute's journal Landscape and Gardening.