French property watch: Marne offers proximity to Paris and champagne
House prices are high in Reims but bargains can be found elsewhere in the north-eastern department
Châlons-en-Champagne (pictured) is the prefecture of Marne rather than the larger city of Reims
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Departmental capital: Châlons-en-Champagne
Main cities/towns: Epernay, Reims, Vitry-le-François
For many people in France, Marne is still haunted by the terrible battles of World War One that were fought here.
One of the country’s best-known war writers, Maurice Genevoix, wrote of his experiences as a young infantry officer in Marne before he was seriously wounded.
Now the horrors of that conflict are long since gone and the department is best known for its bottles of bubbly, with the great champagne houses in Epernay and Reims providing a backbone to the economy and thousands of jobs in the vines.
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Good transport links to Paris
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Reims, which with its suburbs has 319,000 inhabitants – more than half the department’s population – is not the prefecture.
Instead, the much smaller Châlons-en-Champagne is sited near Marne’s geographic centre.
Reims is just over an hour from the eastern outskirts of Paris by the A4 autoroute, and the department has two other motorways – the north-south A26, and the A34, running north-east from Reims to the Ardennes.
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Trains include a TGV station 5km outside Reims, on the Paris-Strasbourg line, and another TGV service stopping at Châlons-en-Champagne.
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Lower house prices away from Reims
House prices around Reims are on the high side, reflecting its proximity to Paris and the attractiveness of the city for tech-savvy 30-somethings.
Away from Reims, however, they are much lower.
An example is an overgrown plot of 1,225m² with a small stone house in near-ruin condition. It is on sale in Charmont for €23,500.
A solid-looking, detached, three-bed home, which looks to date from the 1930s and with decoration from the 1970s, is on sale in Fismes, 35km from Reims, for €49,500. It comes with a 298m² back garden.
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