Hôtel de Rolland

If you look to your left, you’ll see the Hôtel de Rolland, now home to the town hall of Carcassonne. It was originally built as a private mansion for the son of a wealthy local merchant and manufacturer, Jean-François Cavailhès. He bought and tore down 4 houses and 3 stables just to make way for his new residence. He even hired the talented Barata family of sculptors, along with other renowned craftsmen and architects, to work on the project. Fifteen years later, in 1761, the building was finally completed, sporting a monumental Louis XV-style façade decorated with stone mascarons from Pezens. It was, and still is, one of the town’s most beautiful private mansions, with three wings opening onto a courtyard, a beautifully sculpted entrance door and grandiose staircases leading to elegant reception rooms. And let me tell you, Jean-François Cavailhès spared no expense to build it: he paid a total of 172,000 french pounds, roughly equivalent to 2 million euros today! And yet, as you may have noticed, the hotel does not bear his name. He lived there for several years, but then the hotel was bought and occupied by several other bourgeois, eventually being sold to Rolland du Roquan in 1815. His family owned it for more than a century, which is why it bears his name today. In 1924, it was bought by Crédit Agricole, a French international banking group, and then finally by the city in 1978, when it became the Town Hall. Today, it’s truly a window into the opulent 18th century, back when the city thrived under the influence of wealthy cloth merchants who had the means to built themselves luxurious mansions.