MELUN, a town of northern France, capital of the department of Seine-et-Marne, situated north of the forest of Fontainebleau, 28 m. S.S.E. of Paris by rail. Pop. (1931) 14,305. In Caesar's Gallic wars Melun (Melodunum) was taken by his lieutenant Labienus, with a view to attacking Lutetia by the right bank of the Seine. It was pillaged by the Normans, and afterwards became the favourite residence of the first kings of the house of Capet. In 1359 Melun was given up by Jeanne of Navarre to her brother, Charles the Bad, but was retaken by the dauphin Charles and Bertrand Duguesclin. In 1420 it made an heroic defence against the English and Burgundians. Ten years later the people of Melun, with the help of Joan of Arc, drove out the English. It was occupied by the League in 1589, and retaken by Henry IV. in 1590. The town is divided into three parts by the Seine. The principal portion lies on the slope of a hill on the
right bank; on the left bank is the most modern quarter, while the old Roman town occupies an island in the river. On the island stands the Romanesque church of Notre-Dame (iith cent.), formerly part of a nunnery. On the right bank of the river are the church of St. Aspais, an irregularly shaped structure of the 15th and i6th centuries; the hotel-de-ville in the construction of which an old mansion and turret have been utilized; and the tower of St. Bartholomew of the 16th and 18th centuries. Jacques Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, was born at Melun in 1513. In the neighbourhood is the fine château of Vaux-le-Vicomte. Melun is a market for grain and farm produce, and has various small industries, the chief being the manufacture of wooden blinds and screens.