EPERNAY, a town of northern France, capital of an arron dissement in the department of Marne, 88 m. E.N.E. of Paris on the main line of the Eastern railway to Chalons-sur-Marne. Pop. 18,789. The town stands on the left side of the valley of the Marne, where it receives the Cubry. Epernay (Sparnacum) belonged to the archbishops of Reims from the 5th to the loth century, when it passed to the counts of Champagne. It suffered severely during the Hundred Years' War and was burned by Francis I. in 1544• It was captured by Henry of Navarre in 1592. In 1642, along with Chateau-Thierry, it was erected into a duchy and assigned to the duke of Bouillon.
In the central and oldest quarter the streets are narrow and irregular; the suburbs, especially that of La Folie, on the east, contain handsome villas. The town has also extended to the right bank of the Marne. One of its churches preserves a portal and stained-glass windows of the i6th century. Epernay is the prin cipal entrepot of the Champagne wines, which are bottled and kept in extensive vaults in the chalk rock on which the town is built. The manufacture of the apparatus and material used in the champagne industry occupies many hands, and the Eastern Railway Company has important workshops there. Epernay is the seat of a sub-prefect and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce.