Abstract: It is shown that the hyperspace of all nonempty closed subsets $\Cld_{AW}(X)$ of a separable metric space $X$ endowed with the Attouch-Wets topology is homeomorphic to a separable Hilbert space if and only if the completion of $X$ is proper, locally connected and contains no bounded connected component, $X$ is topologically complete and not locally compact at infinity.