Hôtel de préfecture de Seine-et-Marne, Melun, Private mansion in Melun, France

Hôtel de préfecture de Seine-et-Marne occupies the former abbaye Saint-Père at 12 rue des Saints-Pères in Melun. Its long symmetrical facade alternates red brick with light stone quoins around the windows and corners, under a steep dark slate roof with dormer windows capped by curved stone pediments and a row of small oval windows below the roofline. Six windows per floor flank a central entrance with light blue doors, reached by a few steps beneath a flagpole.

Built in the early 1600s as a residence for local officials, the mansion became a departmental government office around 1800 after the land was bought by the administration. During the 1800s, the attached monastery church was removed and several building projects gave the site its current shape.

Today workers use the building for local government services, so visitors see people coming and going with paperwork and appointments. The name on the street signs keeps the memory of the abbaye Saint-Père, the monastery that once stood beside it on this ground.

The building stands at no. 12 rue des Saints-Pères, in the north-west of Melun's centre. The prefecture's inner rooms are not regularly open to visitors, so plan on viewing the brick-and-stone facade, the dormers and the oval windows from the street. The surrounding streets are calm and easy to walk.

Some of its walls and roofs were listed as protected historic sites in 1946, but few passersby notice the fragments of the former monastery that still mark the edge of the property. The building stands on ground once occupied by monks who lived and worked in Melun long before the prefecture arrived.