The Bailiwick of Ornans is located in the locality of the same name, in the Doubs, 25 km south of Besançon.
It is a building built in 1740 to house a court and adjoining rooms, including detention cells. It replaced a first building with the same vocation that dated back to the fifteenth century.
Less than a century after its "inauguration", in 1825, the building was transformed into a town hall. The courtroom becomes the meeting room of the municipal council. As for the old space dedicated to the prison, it was occupied until 2017 by the services of the municipal police!
It is still the bailiwick became town hall which hosts, in the twentieth century, upstairs, the first version of the museum dedicated to the painter Gustave Courbet, born in the town, before the establishment is transferred to a site more spacious.
The facades and roofs of the building, the arches of the ground floor, the two cells and the apartment of the old prisons have been protected as historical monuments since 1979.
The architectural structure has changed little since the construction of the bailiwick; open arcades on the street on the ground floor, the former prison and a large room upstairs...
Part of the premises can be visited during the opening hours of the town hall. Otherwise, a step is required in front of this monument during a walk in this small charming village that crosses the Loue, which gave it the nickname of Little Venice Comtoise, or visit the Courbet Museum.
Information on +33 3 81 62 40 30.
