CHALON-SUR-SAONE, a town of France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of SaOne-et-Loire, 81 miles by rail north of Lyons. It is a neat and well-built town, situated in an extensive plain on the right bank of the Saone, at the junction of the Canal du Centre, and connected by a fine stone bridge with the suburb of St Laurent on an island in the river. Its principal buildings are the cathedral of St Vincent, a Gothic edifice of the latter part of the 14th century, on the site of a church founded about 532 ; the church of St Pierre, with two lofty steeples; the hospitals of St Laurent and St Louis; the town hall, the market, and the courthouse. An obelisk was erected in the 18th century to commemorate the opening of the canal. There are tribunals of primary instance and commerce, an exchange, a communal college, a school of design, a public library, and societies for agriculture, history, archaeology, and arts. The industrial establishments are extensive and various, comprising docks, flour-mills, sugar factories, glass-works, distilleries, breweries, and tile-works ; and the transit trade, both with the north and south of France, is of the greatest importance. There is also manufactured in the town the essence d'orient, a preparation from the scales of the bleak (Cyprinus alburnus), employed in the fabrication of mock pearls.
Chalon-sur-Saone is identified with the ancient Cabillonum, originally a town of the .?Edui. It was chosen in the 6th century by Gontram, king of Burgundy, as his capital ; and it continued till the 10th to pay for its importance by being frequently sacked. The bishop, first appointed in the 4th century, obtained the title of count in the 12th, and retained it to the Revolution. In its modern history, the most important fact is the service the town rendered in the defence of the French territory in 1814, by keeping in check a division of the Austrian army. Population in 1872, 20,055,