A septuagenarian mayor is tackling decline in his corner of rural France

IT IS MID-MORNING, but the cornflower-blue shutters at what was once a cheery café are closed and rusting. Near the church, the grocer’s is boarded up too, its paintwork peeling in the cold damp air. Even the boulangerie, which once sold the morning baguette to this village of some 1,100 people, has gone. Nestling amid forest and cereal fields in northern France, Saintines encapsulates many of the difficulties of rural decline—but also a distinctly French effort to fight it.

Off the high street, past the abandoned former post office, lies the entrance to the town hall. Tucked inside, freshly baked baguettes are lined up in a wooden rack behind a counter that also serves as a rural post office. Customers can pick up a loaf, send a parcel, even register a new baby, all in the same spot. Jean-Pierre Desmoulins, the 73-year-old mayor, has turned bread into a public service, and the little town hall into a social hub. “It creates a meeting place, a point of social contact,” he says. “Sometimes, people spend half an hour here just chatting.”