“Of course it was really sad, it’s a symbol of the republic, but what is more important: a town hall or people living in poverty?” asks Alexander, 24.
It is student night at the Lord John pub, and Alexander is one of several wearing a faluche, a colourful, traditional French student beret. Many chatting under the mist from their vapes took part in the demonstrations last weekend.
I ask Alexander whether the widespread looting and fires seen last weekend, with €500,000 (£420,000) of reported damage in Limoges, helped his argument?
“For some people it’s a catastrophe and some things are not acceptable,” he admits.
Jade, a 19-year-old, medical student, has a similar opinion: “I think burning the town hall is sad, but it’s not the saddest part of the protests.”
She complains of having to live on €300 per month.
“I feel we are not respected as young adults.”
Their views on the town hall’s fate are not replicated in Limoges’ imposing market halls, where neat, narrow timbers sitting upon studded steel girders have been painted a duck-egg blue, using the same engineering approach as the Eiffel Tower.
This has been a “week of chaos” that 63-year-old Jean Roger Faucher would like to forget.
In a region renowned for producing beef, his family has run his fishmonger stall here for more than a century.
“It left us stunned,” he says. “I got married in the town hall, so it had an unimaginable effect on us.”
