Orange's Hôtel de Ville sits on Place Georges Clemenceau, the small central square of the old town. The current building dates from 1671 and replaced an earlier town hall destroyed during the Wars of Religion. The square belfry, with its wrought-iron campanile and Provençal-style clock, is the building's most distinctive feature.
The square itself is the heart of weekday life in Orange — the Thursday morning market spreads out around it, and the cafés at its edges fill at apéritif hour. A discreet plaque marks the spot where the meridian line crosses the square — Orange sits almost exactly at the same longitude as Greenwich would have been if measured from Paris.